Pumped for the new series!
In the meantime, I'd like to open a "best and worst" of the candidates from every series - and an overall best/worst! (Best and worst - your favourites, least, best business people, etc.)
Best Worst
1 Miriam Adele
2 Ruth Alexa
3 Katie Tre
4 Lucinda Ian
5 Debra Noorul
6 Liz Stuart..
7 Helen Edward
8 Tom Maria
9 Alex Sophie
10 Katie Robert

Series 1: Best: Tim, Worst: Matthew
Series 2: Best: Ruth, Worst: Alexa
Series 3: Best: Kristina, Worst: Ifti
Series 4: Best: Claire, Worst: Lindi
Series 5: Best: Yasmina, Worst: Noorul
Series 6: Best: Stella, Worst: Dan
Series 7: Best: Susan, Worst: Edward
Series 8: Best: Nick, Worst: Michael
Series 9: Best: Leah, Worst: Jaz
Series 10: Best: Mark, Worst: Sarah

I've based this on what we saw of their business ability.

I am very surprised you rated Debra as the best Series 5 candidate. The way she conducted herself of many occasions in my opinion worsens her as a candidate. And she was a pretty awful PM in Week 8 - their campaign was truly dire and I think she was lucky to get away that week.

Series 1
Best: James
Worst: Miranda

Series 2
Best: Ruth
Worst: Nargis

Series 3
Best: Kristina
Worst: Gerri

Series 4
Best: Lee
Worst: Nicholas

Series 5
Best: Yasmina
Worst: Adam by default, since he didn't show up. (Noorul was the worst who actually took part)

Junior Apprentice 1
Best: Arjun
Worst: Adam

Series 6
Best: Stella
Worst: Dan

Series 7
Best: Helen
Worst: Alex

Young Apprentice 2
Best: Zara
Worst: Mahamed

Series 8
Best: Nick
Worst: Maria

Young Apprentice 3
Best: Lucy
Worst: Amy

Series 9
Best: Leah
Worst: Sophie

Series 10
Best: Roisin
Worst: Robert

Overall Best: Ruth
Overall Worst: Noorul

Interesting that you say Amy was the worst at business in YA3. Why do you think that? She certainly wasn't very personable, but I think she had moments where she seemed fairly bright. She seemed to do some good sales in the first task.

To be honest, YA3's a pretty hard one to call, as all three of the first firees were almost as bad as each other for different reasons. Max was clearly well out of his comfort zone, Sean was invisible on the first task and just got steamrollered by Maria on the second, and Amy was okayish on the first task (though I seem to remember that all the girls except, ironically enough, Lucy did well) but absolutely awful on the two that followed. I'd probably give Amy the edge as being the worst just because she argued so much with everyone else, but there's really a hair's breadth separating her from the other two.

I would say that Max was the worst, because we didn't see him have a good task. Sean seemed to have a decent Week 1, even if he didn't stand out that much - it was mentioned in the boardroom that he was a good salesman, and he stood up to Max - 'What do you mean, we only need one person selling? Selling is the only thing that makes money!'

I suppose most people will say that Patrick was the worst on that series, but I actually think that he had a lot more to him than he was given credit for. Would be interested to see what our first two posters, who left that series out, think actually.

I'll put my general thoughts up soon!

Unfortunately I don't think I know Young Apprentice well enough to make calls on this!

What are your opinions on all the series George?

It's all on YouTube if you want to remind yourself. I'll probably do them tomorrow, I don't really have time just now.

I'm can't see myself watching YA in the near-future to be honest. I'd much rather watch the main show!

I quite liked Debra. She was very erratic, though - when she was good, she was really good, but she did mess up, like you said.
I was tempted to say Yasmina if only for that finance moment in week four - priceless

That would be harsh! She didn't make any other mistakes like that.

True. But it was such a huge mistake though! Such a careless mistake.

I think every successful person has had a moment like that. Most of the people who have done remotely well on the show have had a poor week at some point.

Yes - it's an unspoken rule! I think even if a candidate was near flawless, one week would be edited to make them look bad, just to stop it from looking like a one horse race!

Well, if someone didn't really make any big mistakes, the only way they could do that would be to make them invisible. I personally don't assume weakness if someone is invisible, though I know a lot of people do.

I don't think Nick Holzherr really had any bad weeks. Week 11 was the closest.

They can do almost anything they want with making a 1 hour episode from over 100 hours of footage. They could make anyone look bad if they wanted to I think. You can't escape from the facts of the task, but the editing team can conceal parts of people's characters.

Series 1: Best: Tim, Worst: Adele
Series 2: Best: Michelle, Worst: Jo
Series 3: Best: Kristina, Worst: Paul
Series 4: Best: Sara, Worst: Michael
Series 5: Best: Yasmina, Worst: Noorul
Series 6: Best: Liz, Worst: Dan
Series 7: Best: Melody, Worst: Zoe
Series 8: Best: Katie, Worst: Azhar
Series 9: Best: Neil, Worst: Zeeshaan
Series 10: Best: Roisin, Worst: Pamela

BiB - Agree and disagree. Some candidates are edited to look bad if only for one week (Katie Hopkins, Helen Milligan, etc) but these candidates never win. All winners have had numerous slip ups.

What slip-ups did Yasmina make, other than the one example that you gave?

In the final - poor flavours. On the TV advertising - kept saying the wrong price (not just her, but still). She also stayed pretty quiet the first few weeks if I remember rightly.
She was a really good candidate though. I just preferred Debra (if there's ever a "marmite" contestant on these kind of things I often tend to go for them).

She wasn't quiet for the first few weeks, she was Project Manager in the second week and led her team to a storming win. And she was a very active contributor in other tasks as well.

I don't completely agree with your comments on the chocolate flavours. Okay, they weren't very nice, but they didn't have enough time to perfect them (a problem that has occurred on numerous tasks). The concept was what won it over Kate's idea. Kate's brand wasn't that distinguishable from any other luxury chocolate brand, whereas Yasmina's stood out. There is a market for controversial chocolate flavours which Yasmina was capitalising on. I think if she'd had a month to work on it (as she would have done in the real world) her chocolates wouldn't have been disgusting, but still would have kept the 'chocolate designed to shock' theme.