...not so much incompetent but unpleasant, aggressive, rude, untrustworthy, bullying etc etc

Last series Katie was the 'hate' figure but already we seem to have three already - Helene, Jenny & Claire and perhaps Alex as a fourth.

Both Alex and Claire had their faults exposed in the boardroom and Simon, who seemed to be a beacon of honesty, got the boot. So however we may dislike their behaviour Siralan doesn't seemed concerned at all and by his actions implies his approval......

I am not naturally evil
Such things I do
Just to make myself
More attractive to you
Have I failed?

Sir Alan Sugar do you know my name
Don't say you don't
Please say you do

The nasty evil character traits are manipulated by and large by the BBC. Katie really was a nasty piece of work, but most of the others are not, TV just makes it seem that way.

i hate this. imagine if a woman had behaved like Alex, there wouldn't be any perhaps about it then. He is much worse than Helene.
In fact, if Kevin was female i think she'd be on the hate figures list too. Raef as well-- she wouldn't be a lovable eccentric any more, the "prince and pauper" and "i hate whiners" lines would have doomed female-Raef to "who does she think she is, royalty?" hate figure forever-- her habit of dressing up in beautiful suits to do laundry would have been mercilessly taken apart as well.

I kind of want to do a psychology experiment; just write up character descriptions, change half the genders and see how people react to "would you find this person likeable?"

Shame that's not the field I research in. But there is something going on here. I am not particularly picking on the OP when I point this out, it's all over the forum. And I am just hoping to make some people a bit more conscious of it by writing this.

I put Alex as a 'perhaps' as I felt the others had "misbehaved" to a greater degree.

Alex's sole, AFAIK, & major fault was his blantant lie in the boardroom.

Very true. Personally I found his behaviour to be even worse than Claire's in this weeks show...and while he has come in for a lot of stick, I do think he would have had a lot more stick had he been a women.

I'm finding the whole bunch hard to like this season!

It's mostly down to the editing. Claire didn't do much wrong other than proffer advice that wasn't wanted. Helene didn't do much wrong other than be frustrated that Lucinda couldn't do the job assigned to her. Jenny didn't do much wrong other than be another person to lose patience with Lucinda at the end of a very long day.

Alex for me is worse than the others. He told Nick to price the fish, then priced the lobster himself, then blamed Nick for getting the lobster wrong. He had a deliberate policy of using delegation to evade responsibility. When Simon tried to delegate to him, he accused Simon of doing the same - and neatly evaded responsibility again. He twisted and turned in the boardroom, picking on Claire when she seemed like the more convenient scapegoat. He seems far more self-aware and calculating than Claire or Helene.

(Of the four of them, Jenny seems by far the least competent.)

Lee, Sara & Raef are the only ones I have any time for

Most of this is utterly delusional and at odds with reality.

Claire is an utterly vile, selfish, spiteful, self-obsessed, status-obsessed mindless chav who has no respect for other people and she has the manners, appaerance and social skills of some hog creature.

Helene and Jenny attacked Lucinda in the most unpleasant personal manner and exhibited some revolting character traits.

Alex may be calculating but he isn't vile and spiteful and deeply offensive.

It's getting a little bit tiresome reading yet another of your tirades jumping down the throat of anybody who actually stands up for Claire and claims that she is a very good team leader, just not very good at taking instructions from other team leaders.

Several people have made the point that although she can be abrasive and abrupt, she is very very good at getting things done - something that your current fave, Alex, shows no skill at whatsoever. Whilst Alex seems to think that sitting with a sneer on his face and refusing to actually do or take responsibility for anything is a good way of getting through the tasks, Claire actually opens her mouth and says what needs saying. True, sometimes she might do better not opening it quite so wide and speaking quite so loud, but the top and bottom of it is that she gets results. That is why (and I'm sure you've been told this before) she has been team leader twice and won twice - whereas Mr Haircut But No Razor has been team leader once and lost once.

There are always people who we don't like, and you have made it obvious that you don't like Claire. Okay, fair enough. But stop telling every single person who posts on any thread on the Apprentice board and stands up for her that they are ignorant, deluded and living in a fantasy land. Because it has been shown over and over again that your claims are wrong. In terms of being a team leader she is head and shoulders above everybody else. She has a 100% success rate, and she has been leader twice. Live with it. Nobody else has been team leader twice. And lots of the ones who've only been team leader once have lost. She hasn't. She's a winner. Even if she'd lost one of the two tasks she has led (and many people, including the other team, thought that she had lost last week) she'd still have achieved a 100% better success rate than Alex. Cos he's never won a task as team leader. And the way he's now disappearing further and further into the background whenever anything that requires responsibility raises its head, it is unlikely he will be team leader again.