Sorry Smugsie. I've been very busy recently and haven't had much time to post on more whimsical subjects.
You need something like the following:
http://www.streamline.net/web-hosting/plus-hosting/
or
http://www.blackfoot.co.uk/hosting/hosting.html (Home or Business are suitable)
I mention these two particular suppliers because I use Streamline and Neil uses Blackfoot. The current Lada UK forum is hosted on Blackfoot and up until last year I had quite a large forum hosted on Streamline. Both were excellent providers and very reliable. Both are indicative of the annual costs you should be budgeting for. Both will handle domain registration for you.
You only need a very basic front page which is little more than a link to the forum. It is possible to have your forum as the front page meaning very little design is required at all. The standard phpBB forum does not have any graphics (like the Lada logos and the title bar on here) but it is easily customisable.
Cheers
David