I think if you are looking to do a PPL then heading to the states won't be worth it. Commercial training there in total comes out as more than half the price of what it is here but the PPL isn't that big a difference.
At Cranfield Airport near hear in MK it's just over £4,000 to get your PPL, in the States it's around £3,000.
If you go for it though you need to be willing to maintain the hours, which isn't cheap. What's more is you need to be dedicated. The pilot I flew with a couple of days ago had a person who tried to join in on the ownership share of his aircraft but turned him down because his piloting was so rusty. He said it was quite common with a lot of people who have PPL's to not bother keeping up with flying.
Advice on going for it...go for it!! My plan is to save £20,000 or so over two years of work (and living with my parents) then head out to Florida taking a year out from work and do this
http://www.flyeasa.com/airline_pilot.php
The equivalent of in the UK is about 50-60k. Landing an airline job in todays aviation industry is near on impossible apparently, but I'd love to get an instrument rating and multi engine rating to fly bigger things and have options later on. I'd be happy with a career change flying Safari planes or being a bush pilot in Canada if I don't end up enjoying hospital work. After I come back here, I'll continue work whilst building more hours, either flying parachute planes/banner planes/whatever during the weekends, then see what the future holds.
Getting paid to fly would be an absolute dream. It'd be like getting paid to ride but 10times better.