I remember being really pleased when she won Series 5 as I always thought she had a raw business acuman about her that not many other people who have appeared on the show had. She seemed to have a real passion about it and did well in every task (except for the costing error in the cosmetics task, which was down to a joint mistake with her Paula and Ben), plus she won every task she was PM.

I think she had the right balance between raw, ruthless passion for business while being adaptable and resilient at the same time. So many candidates are either too hot-headed and stubborn, or are too easy-going and daren't take any chances.

You're right, she broke the record of winning more tasks as PM than any other candidate in the history of the series.

I was well pleased when she won, definitely my fave winner of all. Plus an awesome-sounding last name.

Shame Loralun gave her such a shitty job.

Well, a 3-0 win record as PM is impressive, but you have to consider that there was an element of luck in those three wins.

1st win: She was up against Rocky, who made quite a few strategic errors. His team made a loss in the end. It was a certain win for the girls with hindsight, even with the food problems. Her strategy was simple and paid off - she kept costs down, so I guess you could largely attribute that win to her.

2nd win: Came up with a marketing campaign that was good, but not great. She had the good fortune of having Kate on the team - her presenting was a big factor in securing the win. The other big factor was that Debra messed up a potentially task-winning campaign for the gay community in Margate.

3rd win: Again kept costs down with low cost items. That strategy might have failed if the other team (particularly Lorraine) hadn't messed up in selling their high price items. A couple more of those home-friers sold, and they'd have won. Debra's strong tv-selling was also a big contribution to Yasmina's win.

Don't get me wrong - she was a great manager in all three tasks, and she certainly had raw talent and passion, and was hungry enough. That was certainly what tipped the balance in her favour. She was definetly a worthy winner (imo, at least). I was more satisfied with her than I was with Lee. Whether she was the strongest candidate in all series - that's much harder to say.

She was the first winner I actually agreed with (although if it'd had gone to Kate it wouldn't have been a travesty by any means). I dunno if she's necessarily better than Kate (like I said, I preferred Yasmina but in terms of talent there wasn't much between them) Kristina, Badger, Michelle, or the better series 1 candidates is another thing.

Personally I think Kristina was the strongest (not necessarily my favourite) candidate ever, she consistently performed well, never made a major mistake and the only task I really remember her not doing well on was the trainer branding task (and even then she came out of it better than the rest of her team). Oh she wasn't a very good presenter on the shopping channel (not that I've ever understood how that task even remotely relates to business, from what I can tell it's just a useful way for Lord Sugar to get rid of whoever he wants before the interviews, and is good entertainment) but compared to Simon she was amazing.

What was it ? - receptionist ?

I have to stick with the glorious Ruth Badger as the best contestant ever.

She won on SAS terms - twice by cutting corners with quality that would have been fatal in the real world. She also made one of the most horrendous maths errors in Apprentice history well up there with the 100 chickens for 100 pizzas. With the females, I wouldn't rank her above Ruth, Kate or Michelle and probably not Miriam, Kristina, Debra or Claire either.

If cutting corners on quality were 'fatal in the real world', Sugar would be selling things out of a suitcase rather than being a multi-millionaire.


Not true.

Anyone can make a maths error - especially if you get the units wrong. The Americans have done it twice with spaces projects and wasted hundreds of millions.

The problem in that task was that no one double checked - a fault of the PM.

And in no way can making a mistake involving the cost of something you've never used before compare with the stupidity of buying that many chickens to prepare that much food.

She was one of the first PMs to really grasp the fact that these tasks were not in the real world though. We've seen so many other people get caught up in providing good service and high quality products, as if they were going for repeat business - Yasmina understood that there was no repeat business on offer and that the only point of the task was profit. Of course a real world situation would differ.

She certainly stands out for me as one of the most competent candidates ever. She is also responsible for my favourite Apprentice quote of all time. When Nick pointed out in the soap task that they had spent £400 pounds on the perfume, she replied "No, half of four hund...shit"

Incidentally, the soap task does show that she wasn't just about cutting corners on quality. Even with the cheaper perfume, the soap her team made would have been amongst the best products made by any team in any year. Along, probably, with the Bodyrocker.

For me, Yasmina is better then all the female candidates listed.

Ruth - a good saleswoman (nothing more and nothing less)

Kate - mainly good at pitching and is also easily distracted from the job

Michelle - My second favourite female, but I would still give the edge to Yasmina (on account that Michelle was a bit soft at certain points)

Miriam - Whilst quite good, she just lacked an aggressive drive for the job

Kristina - One of my favourite females, but the first few episodes let her down (kiss-o-gram and the selling a lolly to a kid)

Debra - If they would have thrown the QVC task and the final five program into the bin, nobody would have mentioned her in such a list

Claire - LOL at mentioning a female candidate from series 4

I'd agree with you on all the others but I think these two were probably more experienced and rounded than Yasmina (waits for comments ) at the time. Miriam was unlucky both in whom she was up against and getting fired too early. Michelle could lose focus, but then making soap so did Yasmina. The latter won 'Margate' cos Debra did bad, then won 'shopping channel' cos Debra did good.
Then seemingly won the final cos Kate listenned to Debra's advice. But if luck is part of their skillset, hire them!

Best of a bad bunch.

They were a really uninspiring bunch last year.

Personally, I didn't warm to Yasmina and don't recall her doing anything spectacular.

She had the best pair of baps of last year's crew so I warmed to her immediately. I was delighted her babs won.

Kate's skills went a bit beyond pitching, though that was probably her strongest suit. She was a really terrific PM in the cereal advertising task. I know she was up against the shambolic Pantsman campaign, but even so, she did really well.

Kristina did sometimes push the boundaries a bit, but she wasn't too unethical - we never saw her offering bribes to sports shop owners, for instance!

Debra did well on quite a few of the tasks. She was quite competent; her problem was that she was young and somewhat brash and got up people's noses.

Clare was a bit obnoxious, but again, very capable. How she lost to Lee in the final I'll never know!

If Yasmina is the best apprentice we've had it just goes to show the lack of calibre of the people that enter the competition. Anyone who hasn't I'd advise watching the US apprentice the standard is A LOT higher; see 'Randall' the harvard grad who before winning the US apprentice already had 2 multi-million dollar consultant businesses.

My favourate UK apprentice winner todate has got to be Lee. May not have had the book smarts, but was incredibly street smart and generally a strong performer.

I remember the catering task. She definitely had some good buns back then.

He certainly knew how to sell a pwhoducht

There's no way he'd have won the UK version. Surallen would ask why, exactly, he wanted to give up those two businesses and come and work for him for £100,000 a year.

That's what I'm talking about!!

I must have missed the meaning of the word Apprentice

The only candidates who stood out for me on the American version would be Bill and Kendra.

As a foreigner (neither American nor British) it is always laughable to see how Americans are obsessed with power and the need to showcase it. And I have yet to see a British candidate become obsessed with a magic eight ball or with a bedazzler (ok, perhaps Jadine with her Eclipse thing, but there was a medical reason for that).



Don´t forget his reverse pterodactyl or his glorious bullying of an asian woman

What a guy!

Why didn't you just say his bullying of a woman, why asian woman? There's nothing to suggest he bullied her because she was asian, easy targets come in all colours. I think Lee was more of an equal opportunities bully, he didn't discriminate.

Go with Bill and Kendra. Might add Rebecca. The UK series though has never really done any decent market analysis first and they rarely tend to spot a winning move rather than rely on the other side failiing somewhere. Not sure how well even a Kendra would do under UK conditions. Kendra could also shine when there were fewer people left and fewer hopeless cases to stop her doing so - here you can get excluded or put in too early randomly depending on what your team is doing or Sugar decides.

Agree Lee was a ridiculous choice - he might as well have grabbed the first market stall holder who crossed his path and would have had a good chance of getting someone smarter.

Was astounded she was won over Kate.

However I thing
k Sugar knew Kate was destined for bigger things and thats why he didnt employ her.

Thought she was a pretty poor winner to be honest not as bad as Lee mind you and that posh guy who won with that daft ad where it looked like he was wanking