As far as i have watched it Jordan and Myles are both on 5-0 that's a good standard still.

If Jordan didn't get that huge discount on that musical item they both would of lost & to be honest he is like the front runner he has done more in 5 weeks shown then anyone else.

Even Rebecca looks sharp but i just seem to notice Jordan more in the series.

U don't have to stand out to win the series cos look at Helen Vs Tom the inventor, I can't remember the stats something like Helen 9 wins 1 loss to Toms 2-8 but she would of blown him to death but she came with a deal at the table that didn't stack up and ended up losing

Jason....simples. When he compromised a deal on episode two and bought the product for more expensive than zee had already negotiated was the funniest thing on apprentice in a while. In fact i only watch to see this guy, hes hilarious. He deserves to win this

Agree he wasn't great but his team didn't rebel, he didn't have Zee's faults and most importantly he won. There's been very few great succeses as PM so far, and Luisa's success had a bucket of cold water thrown over it .And, along the way, his competitor for a project in the international selling area, Zee, fell out of the competition. I still don't understand why Lord Sugar is only testing some of the candidate's abilities to do what their proposals require, but at least Myles is still in that game with a win? its true he wasn't great at buying in that environment , but his project seems to rely more on the ability ability to smooth talk the rich, than it does being able to talk to shop keepers?

Alex stands out for me. He is hilarious but also has been quite a good team member most of the tasks. Also think Luisa is one to watch.

I guess I was thinking of the general health care angle but that wasn't clear from what I wrote. And if she had a new product or concept, albeit in cosmetic surgery which is her specialty, that could be huge as it's a very prosperous industry at the moment, I don't see it slowing down soon! I do see your point though

Yes, I'm not sharing the love for Myles either. He got off to a bad start in task 1 by wasting money buying batteries and time inserting them into the lucky cats: an act of generosity which took even the casino managers by surprise. In the beer task, he thought it OK for the trade team to have no samples, which wasted more time when they were eventually sent. And as you say, he made only slightly less of a mess in Dubai than did Zee: only finding half the items, and (again) wasting time hanging around to watch a flag being woven.

Natalie and Jason are the pair I find it hardest to form an opinion on. Any task successes must have been left on the cutting-room floor and even their personal histories (HR manager and historian respectively) fail to answer the question: why are they here?

I can't understand why anybody is including Franceseca as a 'standout'.

I'll give you that she has contributed and got stuck in to tasks but, in the grand scheme of things, she has been nothing more than a supporting player at best.

Incidentally has she made any sales/ brokered any deals yet?

Ahem, Tom Pellereau? Started 0-5, finished 3-8, was a terrible PM, won series seven despite having an awful business plan.

Why? Because he was intelligent and credible and had an existing business which Sugar saw some value in. The kind of skills that most of the tasks tend to highlight - selling skills, managing a team of awkward individuals, quick thinking under pressure - aren't necessarily the skills that you need to be successful as an entrepreneur. Above all you have to have a good idea - for all his other faults, Tom had that.

Didn't she make the big buffalo meat sale last week?

Her one other standout moment so far is a negative one: it was she who made the error with volumes in the beer task.

Overall, she seems quite sensible, solid, a good team player but (unlike, say, Natalie) able to voice her opinion forcefully in tasks without being seen as offensive. Has she done something to push herself forward as a potential winner yet? Not for me, but she's certainly one I'd keep an eye on as being a 'possible'.

Jason is great comedy value, and in the grand Apprentice tradition will probably survive until a week or so before the final as a result. (See Tre Azam, Paul Torrisi, Stuart Baggs, Adam Corbally etc etc) But his lack of business nous and experience is a huge gap on his CV. Unless he has the best business idea ever, he's a makeweight.

I actively dislike Natalie. She was an ineffectual PM on the flat-pack task, before they were split up she always seemed to defer to Luisa, she struggles to contribute in any tasks (not just this week's one), and she has a nasty, spiteful manner in the boardroom where she suddenly comes out all guns blazing. All the biggest, most shrill, most angry arguments so far have involved her. Can you imagine having to work with her for real on a project? She's the person who would sit quietly at the back and do as little as possible, then come in to a project close meeting and tell everyone how all the things that went wrong were their fault.

As an aside, I didn't like the way she played the sexism card in the boardroom either like it was some kind of get out of jail free card. She may well have been right, but it effectively threw a grenade into the boardroom and showed just how nasty she can be when cornered. She could have raised the issue in so many other ways: "I had some ideas to contribute - why did you ignore me?" or "I felt you didn't listen to your team" but no, she just blurted out "you're a sexist pig".

No he didn't.

Tom had, by his own account, abandoned the nail file. It was Lord Sugar who spotted its potential and refocussed Tom's attention.

The idea Tom presented involved visiting offices to make bespoke chairs to end back problems. Lord Sugar rejected this (although I am not sure it is too different in principle from Herman Miller sending fitters with their top-end chairs).

(Pantomime voice) Oh yes, he did. The good idea I was referring to *was* the Styl-File - I did say that his business plan was crap in my post.

As you say, he had moved on to other things despite having had some success getting it into (I think) Boots pre-Apprentice. Sugar saw the potential in that and resurrected it. It's now in Sainsbury's, I believe, selling well, and Tom is working on a range of other associated products.

My main point, however, is that Tom was on the losing team in the opening five tasks. That didn't mean he wasn't a credible candidate, just that he wasn't able to do anything about his team's general incompetence and bad luck in those five tasks.