Just dug my logbook out to take a look.
First flight for PPL was on 04/07/2003 and the Skills Test was on 18/08/2003. In that period I actually flew on 19 days. Total time was 45:30.
By the sounds of things I was lucky, I was fortunate to have good weather, a good instructor, lots of spare time and all my flying was prepaid so there was no financial issues.
ASI