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The free ones attract spam. If you want a good one, buy a vB license. Make sure you meet the software requirements though. Be ready to learn a great deal technically if you are getting into forum software.
I agree with Assraker for sure. Before we made the move to VBulletin it was a constant battle keeping spammers and spambots out of the forum. With VB I think we've actually had to deal with 2 in over a year's time.
That being said if you really really really want to use a free forum I hear "SMF" which stands for "Simple Machines Forum" is now favored over PHPBB. It was designed to integrate into a "Mambo" or "Joomla" as it is now known portal, but can be used standalone.
I'm sure it as well as Mambo/Joomla require a database of some type, such as mysql. However this is the technical end that Assraker warned you about and it's quite a lot of work just to host a simple forum.
You can however get a small online hosting account that will provide a database and a website/forum building tools. H-Townmadness is hosted by "Hostgator" and it offers quite a bit for the money, I'm sure you have something comparable in the UK.
If you want to take a look at SMF you can find it here:
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