Biography: Yasmina Siadatan

Yasmina Siadatan is 27. Of Iranian descent, she was born in Hull. She was educated in a selective grammar school - Kendrick School in Reading, and has a BSc in Economic History With Population Studies. She has lived and worked in Los Angeles and Iran as well as London. She runs a restaurant in Caversham, Mya LaCarte, with her brother Matthew, which serves British cuisine.

Her family backround is a little "unusual" to say the least. Her father, a London restauranteur, is a polygamist. According to the Daily Mirror, her father Mehdi, now aged 58, moved to Britain in 1976 from Italy and married Paula Gabbot, an Englishwoman, in Leeds that year, and they had three children, Matthew, Tim and Yasmina.  But then two years later, he moved a mistress into the marital home, which proved too much for his wife who divorced him. He then married an Italian Cinzia Crispimo in Turkey in an Islamic ceremony, and then took a second wife, Stephania Loi, another Italian in 1989. Then he married a third wife Sarah Deakin, a British lady in 1993. And then he fought and lost a battle with the European courts to get the three marriages officially recognised.

Apparently Yasmina takes it all in her stride and calls the three women "mum" even though none of them are her real mother. Nobody knows what her real mother thinks (the one who was modernist enough to divorce her philandering husband) - she has stayed out of the newspapers so far. Yasmina lives with her real mother, Paula, in Reading.

Of course Yasmina is not responsible for her parent's behaviour - but interacting with three stepmothers and twelve children resulting from them, must have made her adaptable to the things life throws at you.

Update 1st April 2009. Yasmina was the team captain in the second episode, and boy she is assertive. But she won the task and easily. If efficiency is the key to the Apprentice, she has got it in spades. 

Update 8th April 2009. Yasmina was in the winning team, and in their treat afterwards where they got to go to a concert by Katherine Jenkins, the camera zoomed in to show Yasmina and fellow contestant Debra Barr holding hands! A romance is going on!

Update 15th April 2009. Yasmina was hauled into the boardroom for getting the calculations on the costs of essential oils wrong (her team were making luxury soaps). She did make a mistake in her calculations (though Paula Jones should have picked it up), but what saved her was her good performance the previous week. Sir Alan intimated that he wanted her to be team leader again, so that he could reassess her performance, so I'm guessing that she will be the leader next week and her fate depends on whether she suceeds or fails...

Update 27th May 2009 Yasmina was the winning team leader for the third time. Her chances of winning the show are great as she clearly knows how to manage people and get on.