Comment by PoachedSausage

Hard to say. At one time you could turn up and sit a City & Guilds exam, of course to become a bonafide amateur you had to pass the Morse test, but they've relaxed that now. I went from UK Foundation licence to Full licence in about a year, not difficult from a technical point of view as I was working on 500kW broadcast transmitters at the time. The questions about the arcane rules and regulations were probably the hardest. UK amateur radio is quite set in its ways, the average age of UK amateurs is probably around 60. Some of it probably stems from elitism and from some of the UK history of radio piracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_the_United_Kin...

http://www.laughingpoliceman.com/amateur_radio.htm