It's easier in some countries than others. I was expecting it to be quite easy from the UK, but actually quite hard because we don't have either Dwolla or cheap SEPA transfers, and all the exchanges that had domestic UK accounts had them closed (AFAIK). OKPay still has a UK account but they have £4 fixed fee and often takes them a while to process deposits.

I was quite excited when I found a place to buy bitcoins using via Barclay's PingIt smartphone service but even using all the tricks to "hide my root" on my android phone, I couldn't make it install

I think maybe in the UK we have a problem that the financial services industry is so powerful they see bitcoin as a threat.