I was just wondering if we think there will ever again be a series where every candidate gets to lead a team at least once? It has happened twice in the show's history: in Series 2 and in the first series of Junior Apprentice.

Series 2 was back when there were only fourteen candidates, so everyone had done it by Week 7, and there were still three remaining tasks. Junior Apprentice had ten candidates and five tasks, so not including the final, everyone only got one chance to do it. (Oddly enough, in that series each task had one male and one female Project Manager, and the female one always won the task - apart from in the final.)

Somehow, I doubt it will ever happen again. Now that we have more candidates and more room for double firings, a few people seem to always go at the early stages for not doing enough. I'd like to see it happen again though - last year there were quite a few candidates who I really would have liked to see how they fared as PM. This is one of the reasons why I prefer smaller groups of candidates - each person has more of a chance to prove themselves, and it seems a bit fairer.

(It can't happen this year because we've already lost Dan, but I hope that we don't have more than two or three people fired before they lead a team.)

I hope not. It means a lot of team leaders get fired, and in particular the team leader of the first losing team has to be. I don't think Lord Sugar likes to fire team leaders, and in any case, I don't like it.

In series 2 , 5 PMs were fired compared to 7 non-PMs, I don't think that's excessive.

I think the more people get the chance to be PM the better, there are a few people that I was disappointed didn't get the chance to be PM, like Jemma and Lauren from last year

Yes, exactly.

In the two series where everyone got a chance, it went like this.

Series 2
Week 1: Losing PM
Week 2: Losing PM
Week 3: Winning PM from Week 1
Week 4: Losing PM
Week 5: Winning PM from Week 4
Week 6: Losing PM from Week 3
Week 7: Winning PM from Week 2

JA1
Week 1: Losing PM
Week 2: Winning PM from Week 1
Week 3: Losing PM (and losing PM from Week 2 quit)
Week 4: Winning PM from Week 2
Week 5: Winning PM from Week 4

So actually, on both occasions by the time everyone had done it, there had still been more non-PMs than PMs fired. Although it does require the losing Project Manager in Week 1 to be fired.

Last year was truly ridiculous tbh. Having 6 fired without being PM and only 2 of the final five having been PM'd twice perfectly demonstrated that 20 candidates was far too many for 12 weeks.

I would have loved to have seen Steven, Jemma and Lauren's management skills.