ok, so I'm going to give this a whirl this week!
I get the basis of it but have some questions regarding getting through the work proxy!

Ohh and currently im using XP in work and Vista x64 at home, but if it makes it easier i can boot my usb ubuntu at home.

Right the work proxy,
Everything is setup to go through a proxy configuration script;
http://proxy-gw.*****.co.uk:8080/proxy.pac (i can post this if needed) but i do know of a few servers by there hostname/IP - Thor for example

Rights so i run a port scan on Thor to see what ports are open, i get;

23 - Open - Telnet
53 - Open - Domain
80 - Open - WWW
413 - Open - Unknown
514 - Open - Shell
8080 - Open - webcache

Can tunnel through these ports with SSH? and are there any security implications of doing so?

Thanks in advance for any help with this