Can someone inform me on this front, I know 'sarcasm' is the lowest form of something, but I just cannot remember what .....

It is possible for people to learn this hobby on their own. I learned to fly a collective pitch 450 sized electric heli on my own - and without a sim i might add too. I then moved onto a full noise 50 sized nitro 3D heli, again on my own before I was able to locate a suitable local club to which I am now a member of.
Now that I've started flying planes also (with the help that is available at my club), I will state that the sim I subsequently aided in my development hugely. My first ever landing of a plane was with my de-tuned (to low wing trainer responses) 56" Yak54 after the thing died 15 foot up from a take off. As I was just handing the controller back (no buddy box), so there was no time to hand the controller over to the guy I was working with. I landed it, and pretty well I might add (only one slight bounce before I caught it on the elevator), and I still have it in completely undamaged form to this day (I'm going to go fly it tomorrow in fact).
Now I'm not going to state how good of a pilot I feel I am (as I consider myself to be still learning, as I feel we all are), but I will state that just because you learn by yourself, it does not make you any worse of a pilot if your able to think out what it is your doing, and then put it into practice in a planned out manner after working to nail it as much as possible on a good simulator first. I did it, so I'm pretty sure there are a lot of others out there that could do it also as I don't consider myself anything special - just determined and thought out.