Are the 2016 Apprentice candidates the worst of all time?

After yet another toe-curling episode of Apprentice, we were left wondering if this year's batch of contestants really are the most useless ever to appear on the BBC show to date.

Don't get us wrong, we've cried with laughter at the likes of Jason Leech (Series 9) who was the first candidate to resign from being project manager during the task. We sniggered at Ben Clarke (Series 5) and his persistent boasting of his only achievement as being 'offered a scholarship to Sandhurst'. We literally spat our tea out at Mrs Katie Hopkins (Series 3) with her constant eye-batting at Lord Sugar and back-stabbing comments she fired out in the boardroom.

But all of these characters seemed to be amongst a selective set of likeable and somewhat intelligent people, which is difficult to say for the bunch of half-wits in the current series. In fact, we'd struggle to put money on even an potential winner at this stage of the competition.

The first real cracks began to show as early as week one- when the female contestants managed to lose track of their van and sold a chair valued at £300 for £17.50 in a car boot challenge. The male team didn't do much better, after embarrassingly striking up a deal with a man who was unauthorised to buy anything.

Whilst it was amusing to watch them flounder, we presumed it was a general case of first-task nerves, and the real victors would show their colours in the next episode. Nevertheless, the Japanese jean task was more of a shamble than the previous. The women's team turned up to their photo shoot without their jeans, and decided to set their advertising campaign in a toilet with the soundtrack of Taylor Shift Shake It Off, a song choice dubbed 'unfortunate' by Karen.

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History was made in the episode as neither team won the task, with Sugar telling the candidates, "I'm not putting my name to either of these advertising campaigns. They're both useless. Both totally, absolutely useless."

In the most recent episode, teams were given the task of promoting a cycling product through crowd- funding, viral videos and social media. Team Titans produced an hideously embarrassing 'hit and run' scene for their crowd-funding, which featured an old man pretending to drive a car and plough into people in Waterloo station. Things weren't getting much better for Team Nubula, after Trishna Thakrar managed to misspell the word 'gilet' for 'gillet' on their social media campaign, with Alan Sugar pointing out that the incorrect spelling actually meant 'loose woman'.

With five episodes down and still an overwhelming lack of likeable candidates, is Lord Sugar better off saving his time and firing all of their next-suited arses? That may well be, considering series 12 has been just about as disastrous as Karthik Nagesan's monobrow.