Advice starting savings young...

[CRB14]

Rather than high risk stock picking my advice would be to go with a cheap and self managed tracker or fund of some sort. I've tried and done stock picking over the last 4 or 5 years and unless you can devote a significant amount of time and effort I see little point. The big boys are paid to do it so I largely stick to funds these days and they've served me really well. Have a read of some money type blogs. Monevator and Under the Money Tree are decent reads.

In terms of actual funds I have both of the Woodford funds. The Equity Income pays a nice quarterly (I think) dividend and you can pay monthly. The Patient Capital is a bit higher risk and is still finding its feet a little but worth a look.

Just a quick calculation - if you put away £100 a month and gain 5% interest a year you'll have £7k in 5 years time. Not bad for very little effort.