First 'Real' Bike - Any Advice?

basic. wrote (see)

I generally prefer the look of more naked bikes and could spend up to £3000-ish second hand.

Save your money - buy a cheap Bandit/Hornet/CB500/Revere for no more than £1500 (you could do it for half that) and have fun learning about bikes for six months. 

By then you will have made the inevitable mistakes, learnt a shed-load about running a bike and should be able to sell it for near what you paid for it and then spend your £3k on the bike you really know you want.

Wot FJS said.  Fall off, drop, something worth nowt rather than buying a decent bike.  i leant the hard way.  I bought a brand new bandit 650 for £3500 and lost the front when braking to miss a dog the first week i had it. It cost me £180 to fix it.  I was gutted to say thre least!!  I also got bored with it after 7 months and bought a Z750.  I only got £2800 when i sold it.  Good luck and enjoy the freedom.

I agree with what FJS said.

... get  cheap bike, get some practice in, do some more training...

then, perhaps get a newer/more expensive bike when your insurance record will be better and you're less likely to drop it/bin it.

Good luck, enjoy, and ride safe!

I actually went somewhere in the middle between a bike that I wanted and a cheap one, i.e. a relatively cheap 600 sports bike - aside from the few weekends spent in the garage fixing the fucker I am more than happy with it... that said I would be pretty pee'd off if i dropped it and if I did it again I would buy something really shit so I didnt need to worry about it getting nicked in my shitty neighbourhood...

If you like naked bikes a friend of mine raves about 600 hornets (had his one for 6 years now), cheap this time of year too!

If the Earth is the size of a pea in Britain, then the Sun is a beachball 50m away, Pluto is 4km away, and the next nearest star is in Tokyo. Now shrink Pluto's orbit into a coffee cup, then our Milky Way Galaxy fills North America

It wouldn't have crossed my mind to spend 3k on a first bike after taking the test, and  I still wouldn't pay that now really all things considered.

Just buy something reasonably cheap but tough and simple I'd say, so you can make a few mistakes without it getting too expensive (especially in London). Something like a Bandit, gpz500, diversion or a fazer etc would probably be a good start and all very cheap to acquire and insure. 

Gain some experience then you can decide 'how much' bike you need.