Lee
"That's what I'm talking about!"
- Blatant Lies: He claimed to have dropped out of university after two years, when in reality he only did it after four months. Surprisingly enough neither the interviewers nor Sir Alan made a big deal out of it, though if he'd actually claimed to have earned a full degree it might have been a different matter.note
- Flawless Victory: Statistically speaking he was the most successful of the UK show's winners until Season 15's Carina, being on the winning team in seven tasks, winning twice as project manager and never once ending up in the final boardroom. That said, he's usually considered one of the UK edition's weaker winners, if not the absolute weakest.
- Kick the Dog: After Sara had her own team try to lump the blame for the loss on her in Week 6 and then got dragged into the boardroom, Lee openly berated her when she got back to the house, saying that Kevin should still have been in the competition over her.
- My God, What Have I Done?: He eventually had this reaction over his treatment of Sara, and apologized to her before the task that followed.
- Only Sane Man: He quite often proved to be this, especially in the Week 3 task when no-one else on the team seemed to be paying the least bit of attention to costs.
- Running Gag: His "Reverse Pterodactyl" impression, as well as his catchphrase "That's what I'm talking about!"
- Third-Person Person: When voicing his concerns that Ian was plucking the team's prices out of his backside during the third task, he said "Guys, I'm concerned! Lee McQueen is concerned!" Oddly enough, this never happened again during his time on the show.
Claire
"I think in this whole competition, if you sit back and remain under the radar, people assume that they're safe. And I've been bold and I know I'm vocal..."
- Bystander Syndrome: Likely contributed to her only finishing as runner-up, as when her team was sinking she was all too happy to just sit back and let the project manager hang themselves.
- The Cassandra: She was this in Weeks 6 and 9 — in Week 6 she told Kevin that she was better-qualified than him to deliver their sales pitches, and was promptly ignored with disastrous results, while in Week 9 she protested (albeit a little weakly) that Raef and Michael hadn't made it clear enough that they were advertising tissues.
- Crack Defeat: Some feel this way about her failure to win, usually those who think that Lee should have been fired the second the lie on his CV was uncovered. That said, her loss is still far less contentious overall than Ruth's or Kristina's, as Lee got on with people better than she did and was clearly a strong candidate in his own right.
- Jerkass: Most pronounced in the first four tasks, but it did occasionally surface during the remainder of her time on the show. Sir Alan even seemed to obliquely admit that overall she was a better candidate than Lee, but that he wasn't too far behind and would be able to fit better into his organizational structure.
- Long Speech Tea Time: Gave one to interviewer Bordan Tkachuk in the interviews with Bordan telling her to pause for a moment and give herself time to breathe.
- Never My Fault: Nick Hewer called her out on this during the Week 4 boardroom, pointing out that he had never seen her back down from an argument, nor admit to being directly at fault for anything.
- Pet the Dog: While she had been heavily critical of Sara's project management in Week 3, she was one of only two people (the other being Raef) who defended her in Week 6 when many of the other candidates were berating Sara for having stayed in the competition at Kevin's expense. The fact that Kevin had ignored Claire's advice and then tried to blame her for the defeat anyway probably had a lot to do with this.
- Took a Level in Kindness: After getting royally chewed out for her behaviour toward Simon in Week 4, she made a serious effort to reform herself during the remainder of the season.
Alex
"I'm 24 years old. I can't extend my age!"
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Displayed this in the fourth task and the interview round. In the former example, he ducked out of the role of sub-team leader, accusing then-project manager Simon of "diluting his position". Subsequently after Claire was appointed sub-team leader as a result, Alex ganged up on her along with Simon. In the latter example, after Lucinda started expressing doubts about whether she really wanted the job, Alex relayed these doubts in the boardroom, irrevocably sabotaging Lucinda's chances of remaining in the competition. Many Internet forums branded him "Weasel Wotherspoon" as a result of this.
- Crippling Overspecialization: A very good salesman, but his other skills weren't really in the same league.
- Failed a Spot Check: He failed to notice that the tagine he bought in the Marrakech task was actually a Shoddy Knockoff Product. Fortunately for him, what might have been a firing-worthy offence in most circumstances actually ended up being the least serious mistake made by anyone in his team that week.
- High Hopes, Zero Talent: While Alex wasn't totally untalented, he was considered by many to be a favourite to win. Ultimately, as time went along, he began to show himself as being portrayed as a villain, being branded by Ruth Badger as a snake and also being mocked repeatedly on You're Fired, first by Trevor Nelson who branded him "a wuss" and Michael McIntyre who mocked his overly defensive personality and CV.
- Running Gag: Did you know he's only 24? Because he certainly didn't hesitate to remind people of that fact, especially in the interviews which were brought up on You're Fired and he was mocked for it.
- Skewed Priorities: When project managing the first task he pulled the whole team aside to berate them for not selling enough fish... during the lunch rush, when the market was at its busiest.
Helene
"If I had been uncomfortable with working with anyone, it would have been you!"
- The Eeyore: Almost never smiled or seemed to enjoy herself, even during the rewards. Lord Sugar eventually likened her to the Mona Lisa in Week 10.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: An unusual inversion. The rest of the candidates (with the possible exception of Lucinda, and even she never deliberately initiated any fights with Helene) seemed to like her reasonably well, but she made it clear in the Confession Cam inserts that she absolutely loathed every single one of them.
- Hypocrite: Claimed that the reason her team had failed in Week 8 was because they didn't hold together as a team. Strangely enough however, she didn't seem to think that her leadership had anything to do with that.
- It's All About Me: Tended to have moments of this quite often, particularly during the Confession Cam shots with one example being in the interviews:I'm just not used to being surrounded by fifteen gobshites.
- Never My Fault: Never accepted the blame for her firing and spent her exit interview badmouthing Alex.
- Old Shame: In spite of those being close to Helene saying that she has had very mixed feelings on the experience, she was the first candidate and only candidate up and till Season 11's Selina to lash out at the show, claiming that the show made her life a living hell.
- The Load: A downplayed example but was more pronounced off the show than on it. Ruth Badger felt she had been carried through the process and even Sir Alan admitted that he had never seen Helene shine in the process.
Lucinda
"Do not speak to me like that! How dare you!"
- Beware the Nice Ones: Part of the reason why she got as far in the process as she did was because she was willing to defend herself, as both Jenny and Helene found out.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: To a certain degree. While she certainly had her eccentricities, she also had a pretty good business brain.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: In her first few episodes, appeared to have no particular talents except upsetting people. Then she was given the chance to be project manager, and — though her team lost — displayed excellent light-touch leadership abilities.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jenny gave her quite an extreme one in the second task.
Michael
"(while singing) And more! Much more than this! I did it my way!"
- Artistic License – Religion: For someone who claimed to be Jewish or half-Jewish at varying points throughout the Marrakech task, he certainly didn't have much idea what Kosher food was, and ended up buying a Halal chicken.
- Epic Fail: In his final week, Michael was described as being wiped out. How much did he lose by? £9,000! Claire and Helene both panned his leadership describing it as "shit" and the former described him as the worst project manager that she had during her time on the show.
- Four Is Death: Like Adam from the previous season, he was fired after his fourth consecutive boadroom appearance.
- Nice Jewish Boy: Claimed to be this on his CV. In reality he wasn't particularly nice and didn't display any knowledge of Jewish traditions or customs, but apart from that...
- No Indoor Voice: Pretty softly-spoken for the most part, but he let out the sort of yell that you'd expect to hear at a cup final after he won as project manager in Week 6.
- One-Hit Wonder: Steered his team to a pretty convincing victory as project manager in Week 6, where despite the apostrophe fiasco he did make the key decision (over Raef's objections) to nix the original February 13th date for their "Singles' Day Cards," which got a big order and thereby a big win from the third and final retailer.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: Not quite as bad as Season 2's Syed, but he did plenty of this during the boardroom, and on his CV where he claimed to be a "good Jewish boy" in a pretty transparent attempt to gain favour from Sir Alan, who is also from a Jewish ethnic background.
- Really Gets Around: Since leaving the show, he admitted to being an escort to fund gambling debts.
- Serious Business: The debate over whether it should be "Singles Day," "Singles' Day" or "Single's Day" took up a considerable chunk of the greeting cards task, to the point where he attempted to contact the editor of the Daily Telegraph to get his advice.
Raef
"The spoken word is my tool."
- Precision F-Strike: Used quite an audible instance of "Fuck!" in Week 2.
- Upper-Class Twit: Seemed really clueless in the first episode, but he got it together as project manager in the next episode, and was a consistently solid performer throughout the season.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: The advert that his team made in Week 9 was practically the embodiment of the "awesome-looking advert that loses out to a cheaper-looking but more informative advert" trope that runs through the UK Apprentice. Had it been for an established brand it would have worked brilliantly, but in terms of telling customers why they should buy a new brand, it didn't work.
Sara
"People say I'm argumentative, short tempered and always treads on people's toes. But at the end of the day, I don't care because I get the job done."
- Motor Mouth: Averted for the most part, as she was pretty quiet. But then in her last boardroom she started rambling and babbling at length about her fruitless attempts to sell wedding cakes, causing Sir Alan to remark that if he had a cake right there and then, he'd have pushed her head into it.
- The Scapegoat: Jenny tried to throw her under the bus in the same way that she did Shazia. This time, it didn't work. Not that Kevin seemed to realize it, as he brought her back anyway and got fired partly because of that.
Jennifer
"As a saleswoman, I would rate myself as probably the best in Europe."
- Glory Hound: What Lord Sugar accused her of being on Why I Fired Them.
- Ice Queen: Nick outright accused her of being this in the boardroom, and when she got back to the house, it became obvious that the rest of the candidates agreed with him.
- The Runner-Up Takes It All: A less obvious example than others in the UK series as her post-show career took off outside the UK. She was fired half way through as part of a double firing but subsquently has become a highly successful TV presenter on Irish television.
Jenny
"All day it's been like I've had to breastfeed the pair of you."
- Arch-Enemy: With Lucinda, after Jenny spent near enough the entire second task treating her like dirt, and with Sara, just because Jenny seemed to find her a convenient target.
- Backseat Driver: What Sir Alan saw her as in Week 6. Despite Kevin's claims to the contrary, he felt that she ran the task and described Kevin as being waylaid by her.
- Blatant Lies: Told a lot of these while on the show, but the one that ultimately brought her down was when she first claimed to have no idea at all what Kosher food was, then minutes later said that Michael should know all about Kosher food since he's Jewish.
- The Bully: Being a bitch to Lucinda and Sara in one task would have been par for the course on this show, but she was seemingly determined to make their lives as miserable as possible at every opportunity.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: In Marrakech she tried to bribe a sports shop to not string a tennis racquet for the opposing team. The attempt failed to even get off the ground (it probably didn't help that she only offered the equivalent of about £3), but Margaret still brought it up in the boardroom, and Sir Alan was not happy in the slightest.
- It's All About Me: When project managing the Week 2 task, she spent the first two hours giving the team a little presentation on what a great saleswoman she was and how the other women could learn from her example. The men, meanwhile, were actually out selling while this was going on.
- Get Out!: Receieved perhaps one of the more abrupt firings in the season.Sir Alan Sugar: "Jenny, you're fired! Goodbye!" (gestures for her to leave)"
- Jerkass: A strong contender for the biggest Jerkass ever seen on the show. It was best exemplified in Week 2, when she spent an entire car journey subjecting Lucinda (and Sara, when she tried to stand up for her) to a relentless torrent of personal abuse. Aside from that she helped bring down Simon in Week 4, derailed her team in Week 6 and then tried to throw Sara under the bus, and tried to sabotage the opposing team the week after that.
- Never My Fault: Her main strategy for staying in the show. She successfully scapegoated Shazia in Week 2 and indirectly succeeded by trying to do the same to Sara in Week 6 (Sara herself wasn't fired, but Kevin did bring her back instead of Jenny, and was himself fired), but her luck finally ran out when she tried to do it to Michael in Week 7, causing Sir Alan to fire her without even waiting until the final boardroom (something he wouldn't do again until Series 10).
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:"Can you be quiet please? Can? You? Be? Quiet? Please?"
Kevin
"If you don't put your weight behind it, then it's just the same as the U.S saying "We don't care about pollution."."
- Didn't See That Coming: He clearly thought that the motivational talk he had to give the team in Week 3 due to Ian's lack of leadership would be his trump card in getting Ian fired. Which it actually was, just not in the way that Kevin intended; rather than rebutting this accusation, Ian just flat-out lied and tried to deny that the talk had even happened. It was obvious from the gleeful look on Kevin's face that even he hadn't expected Ian to hang himself quite so spectacularly.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Claire remarked on You're Fired that he looked like Matt Lucas.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Became the subject of this in his final week when he brought Sara into the boardroom instead of Jenny in probably the most one sided boardroom in the history of The Apprentice.
- Epic Fail: His sales pitches in Week 6, which mostly consisted of him angrily lecturing the card retailers on why they were environmentally unfriendly. It eventually culminated in him likening the retailers not buying their cards to the US pulling out of the Kyoto Agreement. Not at all surprisingly, the team lost.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick:
- Though he made more errors when it came to cost calculations than a bank manager should really have made, it's fair to say that had Ian been left to all the key decisions in the third week, the result would have been an even bigger defeat.
- When he came back in the season finale, he helped Alex out with a lot of the decisions relating to creating the team's aftershave brand, while Helene spent most of that time complaining about things. If someone watched the finale without seeing the team selections, it would probably have taken them until the presentation to work out that the finalists on that team were Alex and Helene, instead of Alex and Kevin.
- It's All About Me: Along with Nargis from Season 2, he's the shining example of why it's such a bad idea to insist on handling sales presentations in an attempt to make yourself stand out, when Sugar would be more impressed by delegating it to someone with the appropriate experience. Unlike Nargis, he at least had the sense to listen to his team and tone down his last pitch, but it proved too little, too late.
- Xanatos Sucker: He really couldn't tell that Jenny was playing him like a piano throughout the entire Week 6 task, especially when she duped him into bringing back Sara instead of her.
Lindi
- Captain Oblivious: After she and Jennifer gave a hotel a quote of £5,000 for a laundry load that would normally cost around £200-300, Jennifer immediately realized how absurd the quote was, but Lindi seemed completely unaware of this and happily carried on with her pitch, as if nothing was wrong. On top of that, when Sir Alan was pointing out how stupid their laundry hotline was, it was clear that Lindi thought he was talking crap.
- It's All About Me: A big part of why she was fired; she constantly talked about how amazing she was, but never actually demonstrated it.
- Misaimed Fandom: In-universe; Jennifer came up with a "24-hour hotline" to pad out the sales pitches for their laundry service, but Lindi apparently decided it was the best idea ever and made it the centrepiece of her sales pitches. When she bragged about it in the boardroom, Sir Alan pointed out how stupid the idea actually was, since no-one's going to be so worried about their laundry that they'd need the service.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: The only explanation as to why she repeatedly talked about what a good project manager Jenny was in Week 2.
Simon
"Yeah, I need more cheese. I'm alright on mushrooms, tomatoes. I need ham, I need palma ham, I need tuna. I need...I need fucking everything!"
- Alliterative Name: Simon Smith.
- Dark and Troubled Past: While this was never discussed on the show, a news article revealed that before Simon went on the Apprentice, he had been struggling to adapt to civilian life after nine years in the Army because he had been addicted to cocaine for five years and the addiction caused him to break up with his wife.
- The Determinator: Like Andy from the previous season, he proved that just working hard won't get you very far in this show.
- Graceful Loser: Admitted that he deserved to be fired on his exit interview. His reaction on You're Fired also goes to show how much of a popular candidate he was.
- Nice Guys Finish Last: His elimination before any number of outright nasty candidates. Simon even acknowledged it on You're Fired.
- Nice to the Waiter: After his firing, he is shown thanking Frances for letting him know the taxi's ready.
Ian
"Don't all speak at once, guys..."
- All for Nothing: Sir Alan's view on his time as project manager. He was particularly annoyed by how the men had "worked hard, but what was the end result? Nothing."
- Blatant Lies: Tried to deny that Kevin had given the team a motivational talk before the team's pub dinner service in Week 3. Something that might have been a bit more convincing if the talk hadn't been recorded on camera.
- Epic Fail: As well as Lord Sugar branding him an absolute waste of space and the worst candidate from this series, Kevin summed his leadership perfectly here:Kevin: "If Ian ran a bank, every single customer would close their bank account down, the company would lose millions of pounds and the staff would walk out."
- Never My Fault: Blamed nearly the entirety of his failure as project manager on Kevin.
- The Runner-Up Takes It All: Crashed out early on, and Sir Alan even called him the worst candidate from this series, but he subsequently became a BBC Sport reporter focusing on football club Leicester City, even achieving some degree of fame during the club's shock Premier League title win in 2015-16.
Shazia
- Only Sane Woman: Appeared to be this in Week 2. Too bad Sir Alan believed Jenny more than her.
- The Scapegoat: Jenny piled all the blame for the laundry mess-ups in Week 2 onto her. And Sir Alan bought it.
Nicholas
- The B Grade: He claimed that his greatest failure was only getting a B grade on his GCSE French. Sir Alan lampshaded this when firing him, telling him that "now you've got a big F".
- No Social Skills: Telling a famous football fan (and former Tottenham Hotspur chairman) that you can't get along with people who like football? It was no surprise that he was the first person to be fired.
- The Scapegoat: A self-inflicted example. He wasn't really any more responsible for the defeat than Alex and Raef were, and unlike Raef had actually identified and corrected his own mistake. However, his awful defence of himself in the boardroom put paid to his hopes of staying in the competition.
- Upper-Class Twit: A much more glaring example of this trope than Raef. Sir Alan lampshaded this during the "Why I Fired Them" episode, pointing out that someone from such a background should know that lobsters usually cost a little more than £5 each.
