Ranking Every Apprentice Contestant By How Likely They Are to Eat a Worm

The Apprentice is back, and with it I feel the renewed trembling. For a few months now the voices within me have been quieter. Summer came and went. Love Island and the World Cup. The unbroken infinity of the sun. Remember the scorched earth? The yellow sky? The feeling of the first drop of rain on your parched skin? And then the sky got lower by an inch, and the clouds grew more ominous, and you pulled your coat around you tighter. You haven’t noticed it yet – it’s crept up on you, imperceptibly – but you haven’t got home in daylight hours for a couple of weeks, have you? The thick part of autumn is here and the winter-proper looms heavy on the wind. And with it come the voices. Joelllllllll, they hiss, within me. Which of these cunts would eat a wormmmmmmmm? And I have to obey them.

And thus:

Before we start: all of them. The article is now over. If Lord Sugar inelegantly pointed his finger at the lot of them – "We're not having a process this year, we’re just doing this. Claude, get the trough" – they would all tuck their ties into their shirts and chow down. It would not be a case of who would eat a worm, it’s how many worms they would all eat, and how many BBC production runners it would take to tear them away from the worms, the soil and slime smudging their collective face.

Every Apprentice contestant would eat a worm if Lord Sugar asked them to, because they all long and pine for a grotesque caricature of success, suits and a BMW and a high-rise all-glass apartment, and if eating a worm is the shortcut to that, so be it. But primarily we are judging these people on who – as a personality trait – would eat a worm. (The answer is still "most of them", but there are degrees to it). Anyway:

Jasmine wouldn’t eat a worm, no. Look at the way she’s holding her hands together in her promo shot, as if she’s just about to give an overhead projected presentation about why you should invest in hair loss tech. That’s not a hand pose that says, "I use these spades to gobble the worms in with." It's a hand pose that says "I know stuff about fork placement and went to school with the daughter of an Earl." She basically talked her way out of getting fired on Ep #1 because she sounded so fancy Lord Sugar was afraid to can her in case she turned out to be richer than he is, and that’s how she’d get out of worm eating, too: by turning to you, making intense eye contact and asking you to please lower your voice and stop asking to eat a worm, it’s very simply not going to happen.

Nobody called "Camilla" is eating a worm, sorry. Women who intrinsically know more than one recipe for fudge don’t need to be eating worms. She very simply wouldn’t do it.

Sian Gabbidon is my early favourite because she’s basically already got a successful business selling swimwear to girls who are impressed by TOWIE­-level celebrity endorsements (a very legitimate and lucrative source of income), and she’s realised that she can probably double or triple her Instagram followers (and therefore her sales) by appearing on waningly popular BBC business show The Apprentice. Would she eat a worm, though? I think, at a push, all northern girls would eat a worm – there is something hard-baked into the DNA of anyone who has "representing the north!" in their Instagram bio, a sort of intricate inferiority complex where, if they feel it would prove some obtuse point to a southerner, they would do almost anything, and worm eating is definitely up there amongst that – but, like, she’d really have to be pushed. It would take a lot to make Sian Gabbidon eat a worm. She’d have to be locked in a room with Kirstie Allsopp – who, oh gosh, has just dropped her biscuit tin full of buttons! Oh Sian, you couldn’t possibly help me? – while Ed Sheeran was doing one of those radio interviews where he just says "Framlingham" a lot, and consuming the worm would guarantee Sian escape from this southern hell, and then – and only then – would she eat the worm. She’d gulp it down.

Rick Monk and Tom Bunday are the same robust, hard-to-knock-over semi-bearded bloke, and until they split like an ovum at about Week #6 you won’t be able to tell me otherwise. Neither one of them would particularly eat a worm – I’m sad to report that the boys are all actually quite level-headed and boring so far this year, and casting directors have neglected to put enough of the OTT alpha boors in that they usually do, so instead there are a handful of speccy lads who stand at the back and go "I’m a numbers man" and some quite normal guys who look like they’ve never taken steroids in their lives, and then the Rick/Tom chimera, who so far have said sensible things like, "Let’s take a minute to think," and, "Are you sure about that?" and, "We all agree on this idea, yeah?" and haven’t started a single fight. For this reason, I think both of them could be pushed into eating a worm if it was a vital part of the task – "Guys, guys, guys: it says here we have to eat a worm. Has the sub-team eaten a worm? Get them on the phone. If not I'll bang it in now" – but under no further circumstances would they do it.

Feel like they took Daniel from one of those annual "These Are The Most-Liked People On Tinder!" articles they always do where they get 30 or so singles who all look and speak more-or-less the same and get them to say what their opening line is, and their opening line is always, "Tell me something interesting about yourself." What are you looking for? "Nice eyes, nice smile." What’s a turn off? "Obnoxious bio." Would you eat wormy? "No."

Kurran is our worm-eating weathervane, the moment in the list where the air starts to change, because yes, Kurran would absolutely eat a worm. He has resplendent hair and adult braces and seemingly every double-breasted suit jacket in England. He also has a deep, deep, deep need to be loved and appreciated by the team-mates around him, and an even greater need to impress upon Lord Sugar. Kurran, two handfuls into a worm trough: "Does it please you, mine Lord?" Kurran, sweating now, soil on his hands, his sleeves rolled up: "I will eat as many worms at it takes to win your favour, sire!" Kurran, hours have passed now, the worms have been replenished, he has consumed close to a barrel full of them: "I will make it my life’s work to eat every worm that crosses you, my liege!" Sugar’s not interested. He’s too busy thinking about yachts. But he lets him eat, because… why not?

I absolutely would not fuck with Khadija, and I fear for the safety of whoever crosses her first on this show. That said, would she eat a worm? Yeah. With a sort of detached, pragmatic, emotionless air of nonchalance, she would eat a worm. All the other girls on her team would recoil at the worm, and she would just stride up to it, pinch it between two joyless fingers, down in one. Tears her top off and just has them all out for a fight. Returns to the board room with her hands bandaged and bloody. "They’re all dead, Lord Sugar," she says. "Very well," he nods. "Well. Go back to the house, I suppose."

The first of this year’s cuck contestants, i.e. the person who could post likely be harangued into eating a worm by just being shouted down to do it by every other member of the team. “I was wondering if I could be PM this wee—“ Frank starts, and everyone turns and shouts over him, votes over him and elects Tom instead, and the boys all cheer, chanting, sub-dividing into teams, and then where Frank asks something sensible – "What’s our actual plan for the task, then?" – mob mentality turns in, and it all goes a bit Lord of the Flies, and long story short he ends up, sobbing, standing on a table during a conference call, tie round his head, eating worms.

He’s a 21-year-old wearing a three-piece suit. He is the worm.

Sabrina is this year's jolly-hockeysticks posh-girl, and you find posh girls go into one of two categories: long-nosed "you call this champagne?" types who have literally never been on a bus, and then the robust and hearty sporty types who don't mind getting shit on their hands and always have a Facebook profile picture of them drinking a jug of ale at a country pub after a hunt. Sabrina owns a tennis events company and looks like she could get me in a headlock, so I’m saying she’s the latter breed of posh girl, and therefore she would eat a worm, absolutely. She’d do it then say, "Oh god, it’s just a worm, girls – grow up," then, like, ride her horse to Harvey Nicks or something. Hard posh girls are a completely different breed.

Anyone who has ever thought, 'You know what? I might pierce my fucking eye,' has no boundaries, no limits, no rules they won’t break or lines they won’t cross, no respect, nothing to live for and nothing to die against, and therefore, by that reasoning alone, yes, Sarah Ann Magson would eat a worm. She'd loop a worm around her eye piercing then suck it down into her mouth like a fat squirming spaghetti.

Jackie is this year’s "read the Wikipedia entry for Machiavelli on the cab ride over" contestant, and for that reason she would eat a worm as part of a shady ruse to undermine or over-perform against weaker competition as an attempt to oust them. Jackie, side-eyeing Jasmine, eating worms silently at her until she cries. "Lord Sugar, it’s clear this task was lost not on the fact that I spent the entire two days eating worms, but from mismanagement at the top that allowed me to do that." Jackie’s going to go quite far in this process, I reckon. She’s going to kill a lot of worms with her mouth to do that.

Would do literally anything to keep Lord Sugar looking at him for just a second more, just a second more sweet Lord, please Lord Sugar, look at me, please Sir, I’m eating the worms—

Always one lad whose main personality trait is "cheery salt-of-the-earth affected northernness", always one lad whose main personality trait is "glasses", always one lad whose main personality trait is "I think a maroon-coloured suit is a good idea". David Alden is all of these and more. He would eat a worm without a single second of hesitation.

Sarah would eat the worms because she has already shown she has an exploitable Achilles – constant discomfort with her own class – that, in one single episode, made her get up in two (two.) people’s faces and go, "YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME, DON’T YOU?" when nobody really said anything, and also she’s got a background as a performer, so yes, she’d chomp worms down until the rains pelted the skyscrapers down to dust, just so people kept looking at her while she did it. "THINK YOU’RE TOO GOOD TO EAT WORMS, DON’T YOU, JASMINE?" she’s saying, six buckets in. "WELL I’LL TELL YOU: I’LL DO OWT TO WIN, ME. I DON’T CARE. I’M NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS. I’VE ET MORE WORMS THAN YOU’VE HAD HOT DINNERS." Tears running down her face. Lips ballooned up monstrously. Karren, like cut glass, "I think you’re having an allergic reaction to the worms." Sarah doesn’t care. "I think you should stop eating the worms, Sarah." Not going to happen. She’ll stop eating worms over her dead body, and yours and all.

Alan Sugar’s telling one of those long stories he always does when it’s the Smelling What’s Selling challenge, about how he used to sell things on a market, and he used to smell what sold, and shit like that. It’s taking ages. He keeps crossing his arms then scratching his temples. "And I’ll tell you what, back then – if we ate worms, then we ate worms"” Nobody really knows what the analogy means. "I’m… not looking for a worm." He’s losing it. Can a producer get in his earpiece? "Look, I’ve had enough. You’re all fired. I just want to be on a yacht."

Claude would eat a worm, yes, because he – out of everyone on this list – looks the most like one. Entirely hairless head and body? Check. Long scrunched-up neck thing attaching his head to his wider body? Check. Squirms around on the floor beneath Sugar’s feet like the little fucking worm he is? Check. The worm boy would eat the worm. Absolutely.

She would sternly talk to a worm until it coiled up and died, but she wouldn’t eat one, absolutely not.

The main conclusion is: I simply must stop thinking about worms.

@joelgolby