High wing electric foamy. Specifically, the GWS E-Starter is a great learning plane, which is very stable, but can be configured to be very manouverable, and only costs £25, with engine. You then need to spend about £60-£80 on radio gear, batteries, chargers, but then you're set.
Like Nex said, foamies are great cos they're cheap, but they're not invincible. You can get certain ready built beginner planes made out of material that's hard to break, but most foamies can only take mild crashes without breaking. What makes them awesome is you just glue them back together with any standard epoxy or foam glue. And you can glue em over and over. I've smashed one of my planes too pieces before in a vertical 30mph crash into solid concrete, and glued it back together in 30 minutes, and it flew better than it did before!
They're also really light so they can be hand launched pretty much anywhere.
As I said, a high wing plane is a must. Do not start off with a mid wing 3D plane, or low wing warbird type plane. The wing must be high. This means the plane "hangs" on the wing, rather than "balances" on it, which means it's more stable and much easier to control. From personal experience, and watching two other mates of mine, if you try and fly a Spitfire as you first plane, you will smash it to pieces over and over and over and over ..
3 Channel is a good starter - Throttle, rudder, and elevator. Ailerons (the flaps on the wings) are not necessary to fly a high wing plane. The rudder will do all the turning required. Ailerons obviously roll on the planes z-axis, and dramatically increase the complexity of flying the plane, and visually it's direction of travel. There is nothing more confusing, then flying a plane invested, towards you, and knowing exactly what to do with your 4-channels of control to keep it airborne. So 3 channel planes are the best place to start, and are still great fun to fly. You can still do loops, low flying, tip stalls etc. but not barrel rolls, knife edges, flying inverted ... all the hard moves that make you crash.
Ok, more later. I'm off out to fly these bad boys now. If you have any other questions, just ask.
