Kempus,
I haven't trawled through the other pages so this may have been said before, but the only people who pay £6000+ are people with more money than sense. With the exchange rate as it is at the moment, if you go to the States for 3 weeks you can go from total ab-intio to JAA PPL with night rating for around £3,000 including your flight over. This includes everything you'll need and no, it's not necessary to do the exams or spend any money before you go. When you return, you'll need a couple of hours of UK 'acclimitisation' (I needed 4) and then you can rent/buy a share while other people spend up to three times as much and take 50 times as long.
Ignore all the 'if you want to fly in the UK, you should do your license in the UK' comments because they're total rubbish. Check out schools in the US (or even Canada and S Africa) via pprune and book your ticket.
Re flying when you get back - I pay £45pm and £45ph (for 6 hours pm - that's the cost of my former smoking habit) for a 4-seat Piper in the South of England - it's possible to do it even cheaper.