152, crashdive is absolutely right about attaining some kind of IT qualification. We operate in an environment where your typical recruitment consultant, or HR person, will rifle through a pile of CV's stopping only when the letters under "education" look right.
In my case I went back to uni at the age of 25 to do an IT based MSc. This was after a degree in Geography and a few years working in the live production industry. The MSc cost £2600 and lasted for one fairly intense year. It has been worth every penny. Currently I am permanent at a London based consultancy. The job involves both facing clients and hands on programming (server-side Java). I also dabble in a bit of training from time to time. This tends to break things up quite nicely as it gives me a chance to meet people from other companies and stay in tune with what the market is doing.
There are a lot of different jobs to be had so you need to be in tune with where your interests lay. If you fancy youself as someone who sits in front of the screen all day churning out slick code then a development role is for you. You may be into setting up and administering networks, in which case a systems admin job may be more appropriate. In either case there are industry qualifications to be had and these are what you should be looking at once you have got your foot in the door as they will help you to progress on to bigger and better things(££).
It's a great industry which has many rewards. The market may not be as buoyant as it was a few months ago but there is still a shortage of skilled people, especially on the development (programming) side of things.
So get yourself onto a good course and keep scanning the industry press as things are changing all the time. Use sites such as
www.techweb.com to get a good all round picture.
Good luck