I've compiled a list of ten of the worst candidates (in my opinion) to have appeared on the show in all series. These candidates I felt were absolutely abysmal in terms of personality, manner and basic business sense. I 'd be interested to see anyone else's list, but here's mine.

1. (S4) Jenny Celerier - My most loathed contestant across all series, and I think most would agree. Vile, moronic, annoying and rightfully at the top of the list. This was not helped by her arrogance in an interview with DS a year later, where she basically blamed the editing and said she should have got to the final. She may have been a good salesperson, but would or could you want to work with her after seeing the way she acted towards so many people, even if she had some skills? I think not.

2. (S4) Michael Sophocles - Very funny if he had been fired earlier - but Michael surviving over Raef I think caused people to lose a lot of respect for Sir Alan's judgement for a long time (it certainly did for me). Cheered very load when he was fired .

3. (S3) Rory Laing - I will never understand what was going on in that mass of thick grey matter known as Rory's brain. But for me, he was gone as soon as he started telling his team to take their jackets off...

4. (S4) Helene Speight - I have to hand it to her - she really broke a record. No, not for suriving in a "male dominated environment". For being the first contestant ever, on the history of the apprentice, or any serious competitive programme, to get to the final by doing absolutely NOTHING, for not showing any skills or value as a candidate. But I am just mincing my words. Helene getting to the final was almost as big a farce as Michael surving until week 10.

5. (S2) Samuel Judah - Abrasive, useless, skiving work, full of bad excuses, no personality. Firing was overdue in my opinion.

6. (S3) Paul Callaghan - The French campaign was probably the greatest disaster of Lt. Callaghans career. And it was the last we would see. Sucked in by Katie, arrogant, pompous and irritating. No wonder Kristina and Adam didn't get on with him! Like Jenny C, he continued to be just as arrogant afterwards, blaming Adam for all his mistakes.

7. (S2) Mani Sandher The "world class business presenter" still claims to this day that his awful presentation of team Invicta's calendar was unfairly edited. Full of hot air and management speak. Luckily this arrogant twit was crushed soon after by the Badger.

8. (S4) Kevin Shaw - The matt lucas lookalike providing brief entertainment with his cocky but stupid demanour, brought out our scorn when he was enslaved by Jenny to use her idea of environmental waste paper cards, and our anger when he brought back Sara instead of Jenny. At least he went out at the right time, and his humble attitude afterwards is his saving grace.

9. (S2) Jo Cameron - My most irritating contestant for a long time. No value as a businesswoman whatsoever, annoying, over-emotional, mindless and nitpicking. How she survived so long is a mystery to me. I can see why Sir Alan felt the second series was turning the show into Big Brother.
Entertaining at least.

10. (S5) Philip Taylor - How far a man can fall indeed. First he was celebrated after the "body rocka" as a possible finalist, then we saw him after "pants man" as an arrogant, annoying loudmouth. Luckily, his first invention is his saving grace, but his second ensures his place on the list.

Also worthy of dishonourable mention are Ian stringer, Lindsay Boggard, Nargis Ara and others.

I'd agree with a lot of yours.

However, I'd have to put Syed on my list, the delusional ****. And, although I liked her as a person, I'm not sure Alexa might not be there or thereabouts.

Oh and I forgot to mention Noorul. Probably should have put him somewhere on that list.

Here's my list in no particular order:

Rory Laing - Maybe the worst project manager ever. Returned for the final task, just to show us all one more time how much of a prat he was.

Noorul Choudhury - A guy that was totally out of his element, Even the Junior Apprentices would have trashed this guy.

Paul Callaghan - I couldn't stand this guy. His ineptitude in the France task is a classic, but it didn't look like he realized himself how much of a screw-up he was. A self-important prick.

Jenny Celerier - Absolutely disgusting individual. Vile, ugly, useless.

Helene Speight - Worst finalist ever. No people skills whatsoever.

Michael Sophocles - Was he the most irritating candidate ever? The final and best proof that playing the "I'm just like you, Sir Alan"-card REALLY works.

Adele Lock - Probably the only really unlikeable person in series 1, even though I couldn't stand Saira at times.

Ifti Chaudhri Noorul's cousin? The guy was OK, but having a breakdown after being away from your family for about four days isn't exactly what you would call apprentice material.

Alex Wotherspoon Won't waste words on this guy.

Sharon Macallister I just can't stand people who are complaining and sulking almost all the time.

All the other suggestions in the OP's list are good suggestions. It was very difficult narrowing this down to ten people. I couldn't stand Jo, for example, maybe I should have listed her as well.

My all-time favourite candidate is the worst one I can remember: Alexa Tilley.

She made Sugar the most angry when he said "my money is not something you can piss all over the wall" or something like that. It was the chicken challenge. They bought too many chickens. In terms of how angry Sugar got, he was genuinely upset they'd wasted his money, I think she was the worst. She had a really sweet personality but from a business perspective totally useless. But I don't care, Alexa. You were lovely!

Kate Walsh was quite nice too but she was good at the tasks so we can't put her in the useless category.

RE: OP's list. Yeah Syed needs to be there too. In place of Helene if the list is limited to worst ten. Your list is pretty much in the right order too IMHO lol. Might swap Ian Stringer for Kevin though.

It's very easy for the editors to make it appear a candidate has done nothing. Just leave their stuff out until they are PM when they have to show it. in S5 Kim, Paula and Noorul were deep deep background until then. All three useless? Or just as PM's (Paula only made two really bad mistakes as PM).

I think to be nominated as 'worst' we have had to see sustained active f*ckwittery. For example given several choices, they go for the really insane one everytime. Lying, deviousness, never taking the blame for anything etc should get a nomination too. Especially if they are hopeless at that as well A ridiculously high opinion of themselves is a must though. Which I think lets off Kim and Noorul, all talk and out of their depth but nice enough otherwise.

Question is, is one good task enough to keep them off the worst list? Phil is on there (rightly). But what about Katie H, Lucinda or even Tre?

There's only one - Katie Hopkins. Who needs a job when you can sleep your way to the top?:yawn:

Roughly in order. Will listen to appeals for clemency for the last three.

Jenny Celery for bullying, cheating, and having zero self awareness until she saw it all the same time as million of the public. He He He

Katie Hopkins for bigotry, egotism and sheer dishonesty. And for being proud of it.

Alan Sugar for letting Syed Ahmed, Michael Sophocles and Katie Hopintobed treat him as a numpty. Repeatedly.

Michael Sophocles for pretending he had any skills in anything other than sliming away leaving others in it.

Lucinda Ledgerwood for whining and pretending to be useless in order to be the centre of attention.

Mani Sandher for thinking even bad BS works everytime.

Paul Callaghan for making everyone really worry about the state of the Army. I mean they gave him a gun.

Ian Stringer for not being able to spell the words 'arrogance' or 'blind funk' either

Phillip Taylor for being an overgrown child.

Jo Cameron for not understanding that this was being filmed.

(and turning Queen's Evidence)

Nick Hewer for repeated saying so much BS and missing the point for the sake of an ego-bite, you'd be on the list if you were ever to be a candidate.

Thanks for the feedback! I think I do need to change them round a bit - maybe Jo was worse than Kevin and Ian should take Kevin's place. The candidates I included here (with the possible exception of Philip) were all abysmal from day one, in my opinion. They all seemed to show a lack of basic common sense in full view of everyone. How low I rate them (meaning close to the top) also depends if they went out at the right time (which Michael and Jenny didn't) and if they showed no integrity. A good deal of them are personality disorders, but personality is just one of many factors. The timing of firing factor lead me to put Helene there, because she basically demonstrated no exceptional skill and still got to the final.

I did actually think of putting Syed in there - but then I realised while he was a self delusional a**e, and he did order 100 chickens (the worst disaster in the show's history, imo lol) and made a total mess of other tasks (flats and cruise ship), one of the funniest things about him was that he would cycle so rapidly between extremely bad and good moments over every episode. On the first task, he negotiated the cost of the fruit they were purchasing down a lot. The week before the chicken disaster, he lead his team to victory in the shopping task, buying three lobsters well below retail price (one he bought for £10, the other two £15 I think).

Also the deal he closed in week 8, with the fuel cans, was a great acheivement. He was late and got fined, but Sugar was apparently so impressed with his sales skills that he offered him immunity from firing (Syed refused). Love him or loathe him, Syed did show some flair - but very occasionally lol. He wasn't abysmal consistently.

All three of the names you mentioned at the end were difficult to virtually psychotic in terms of character - I include Lucinda in that, despite the fact I liked watching her. But they did demonstrate some skill or flair - Tre in particular. He had good common sense and business acumen, which is more than could be said for most of the people on my list, especially Jenny C.

Not entirely sure about Katie though - she's done a lot of damage to the original soul of the programme, so perhaps she does deserve a place...

Philip is on there, rightly as you said, because it seemed like he was going to be one of the final five at first, but then he quickly showed himself to be a loud and irritating fantasist. He desrves the place because he is, in my opinion, one of the biggest dissapointments in apprentice history.

Apprenticeguru, I agree with most of your reasons as to why and where they are on the list. Some however did hang on for later through no real action of theirs. Kevin might have put off the inevitable by bringing Jenny Celery back. Helene probably survived because it was a particularly sucky year and a bodged final. Twice others blundered in front of Noorul and took the bullet instead.

Having the arrogance to refuse to be managed is one of my reasons.
In Tre's case, he often had good reasons but a destructive way of going about it. In Syed's case, you could never be sure what he what up to despite what he told you. Both were also very lucky.

Many many of the candidates are/were a bit (a bit?) arrogant. But most have the sense to know when to rein it in and also have something to back up the talk. Failure on both those I think should make them candidates for The List. Or should that be for The Village? The Prisoner meets Royston Vasey.

I loved Ginger Jenny! And Katie Hopkins was my favourite candidate of ALL TIME. Loved how bitchy she was

Sounds like you work for the News of the World

That would almost seem to sum up Jenny Celery and Michael Sophocles. Best seen in the Marrakesh task, when they bought "kosher chicken" leading to the boardroom revelation that Michael had pretended to be Jewish in his application to ingratiate himself with Sir Alan, and when they tried to bribe shop staff to sabotage the items the other team were buying. Surely no Apprentice candidates managed to combine repellent moral bankruptcy and staggering incompetence like those two.

Series 1: Raj Dhonota. Inarticulate and inadequate. How he got to week nine is unbelieveable.

I also forgot another one - Lindi Mngaza, who was arguably the most brainless contestant of all five series imo.

What about the woman that left first week in S5, the one who didn't know how to smile.

Anita Shah, wasn't that her name?

I would argue that the winner of series 2, Michelle Dewberry, is the worst candidate ever because she got "fired" in the real world by the then Sir Alan. You can say Katie Hopkins, Ginger Jenny, et. al. are all conniving, evil manipulators, but they are what they are. Michelle was the chocolate teapot and melted under the real heat.

You can't POSSIBLY hate Mister Hewer! Sex on legs and an utter darling! The facial expressions deserve a show of their own!

Michelle left to further her own career, I'm, sure SirAlan has slated her for it recently?

Sure, Michelle left to further her own career. Isn't that the diplomatic way of pronouncing "You're fired"?

No, getting fired is not the only way to leave a company you're working for.

You can also do this thing called "resigning"

One of the problems with the show is that the job the winner gets isn't anything special. Michelle was set to recycling PCs. She looked into it and decided it wasn't viable.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2086639,00.html

We were going to offer a service to a consumer so that if you have an old telly you pay us and we'll collect and recycle it. Unfortunately we didn't make provision for the fact that consumers already get that service for free, or they will once a new regulation is implemented. There was nowhere for us to find our niche and to set up as a business. Which left me in a bit of a predicament. I was given other jobs to do within Amstrad and I just sat there and I thought the process that I went through versus what I was given at the end didn't correlate.

To put that in context, before she entered The Apprentice she had own own successful business, and was earning well over £100k pa already. She had succeeded in the real world; to described her as a chocolate teapot is ridiculous.

She won because she was the best candidate that series - whatever happened subsequently doesn't change that.

Well, I might argue that Ruth was really the best candidate. But I agree Michelle was by no means rubbish.