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A decade of Alan Sugar’s The Apprentice: Best and worst candidates

As Alan Sugar’s The Apprentice returns to our screens tonight, reaching it’s 10 year milestone, we run down the best and worst candidates, loosely separated into those that you love to hate, and those that you hate to love (because they’re the ones who could have ended up with a £100k a year job with Sugar)

New candidates for Season 10 can be found here. Anyone we’ve missed? Give us a comment at the bottom.

1. Jason Leech

Most memorable line: “My intelligence is like a machete in the jungle.” Although putting in our ‘worst’ section probably isn’t fair, it pretty much summed Jason up when Alan Sugar said that Leech is an “awfully nice fellow, but it was time for (him) to go” in Series 9.

2. Melody Hossaini

Knowing 5 languages didn’t help Melody in Season 7, apparently she thought that skewing market research at Week 8 would help her out, but ultimately led to the worst failure the programme ever saw, with no orders at all for the product that week.

3. Michael Sophocles

Sugar called him a “disaster zone”, and rightly so. Attempting to sell luxury cars at a fruit and veg market was a highlight. Telesales executive Sophocles begged for his life in the boardroom, pleading: “I’m naïve, I’m a young man, I’ve shown glimmers of brilliance.” Not brilliant enough I’m afraid.

4. Susan Ma

Not the brightest star in the sky, Susan was better known for her time in Season 7 making embarassing gaffes and being unable to recall what was in the British museum. Cue awkwardly astonished silences and suppressed laughter from the other candidates, needless to say she didn’t get far.

5. Katie Hopkins

Of course Katie Hopkins makes the worst end of this list. Despite turning down a place in the finals, no amount of business know-how could ever make up for going from a respectable businesswoman to tabloid gossip fodder. It also doesn’t help that Sugar’s questioning about her childcare arrangements (the reason for her quitting the show apparently) led to him being criticised by the TUC and numerous other organisations.

6. Ricky Martin

The unfortunately named Ricky won Season 8 of The Apprentice and has successfully started a science and technology recruitment company with Alan Sugar which is now EU-wide. It also helped him in making this list that he has a background in professional wrestling. Nothing to do with business, just excellent TV .

7. Luisa Zissman

One of the more controversial on the list, Zissman may frequent the tabloids, have been a resident of the Celebrity Big Brother House and got in her birthday suit for a men’s mag, but behind that there is also a shrewd businesswoman.

8. Ruth Badger

Way back in 2006, Badger was one of the more memorable contestants of Season 2, despite being on the losing team regularly she excelled in tasks, appeared in her own show and on The Apprentice spin-off . She was Runner-up to Michelle Dewbury but we think she deserved the win.

9. Jim Eastwood

From Season 7, Jim’s had a heart-warming entrepreneurial back story, working in his Dad’s fish & chip shop in Ireland from the age of 9, he was so close to winning and held his own in the boardroom, but his arrogance probably tripped him up. He said that “I’m not a show pony or a one-trick pony, I’m not a jack-ass or a stubborn mule, and I’m definitely not a wild stallion that needs to be tamed. I am the champion thoroughbred that this process requires.”

10. Neil Clough

Not only does Neil write for Bdaily, but he has gone from success to success after appearing on the last season of The Apprentice. A hairs breadth from the final, Neil stuck to his guns and refused to change his business plan, which ultimately got him booted from the show. However after the season ended, he became an entrepreneur with a highly successful sales training and recruitment business, as well as being a non-executive director in two other successful UK businesses, and motivational speaker

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .