Regarding the Far East, Middle East thing....
If you take 3 or 4 popular low cost airlines from the Far East you will see that they all stipulate a minimum of around 1,500 hours of multi-crew twin jet time. Right now and for a few more years, these airlines will have no shortage of applicants with the above experience.
Sure, from time to time, airlines like to balance the books by hiring low hours graduates but if you analyse the trend you will see that these carriers are now being more and more bound by the law of their lands to hire graduates from their own nation first. In fact a lot of Far Eastern and Middle Eastern airlines run their own shemes for ab initios. These airlines have to now prove that they are genuinely struggling to find suitable pilots before they are allowed to hire from abroad.
Basically, much of the old world is coming of age. A Brit now stands as much chance of landing his/her first job in the Far East as a Malaysian does of finding one in Europe.
My advice to Brits would be stick to Europe and learn a couple more languages. 4/5 European airlines require their pilots to speak their national language. Brits are at a severe disadvantage.