Ok guys,
I've finally got to the bottom of this problem.
Yes also as Keith mentioned in the above post the classpath for the class I was executing had to be set (I write all my
test programs in another package which wasn't in the classpath).
The mysql-connector-java-5.0.4-bin-g.jar has to be placed in the C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_07\lib\ext folder on my computer even though I thought adding to the classpath would have been sufficient. I found this on a MySQL.com website forum. - A lot of people seem to have the same problem as the MySQL documentatiion (& the Apache Tomcat) doesn't mention this.
If anyone has outstanding issues regarding this mail me whenever.
Now that I have the DB running locally, I'll be testing it on my webserever.
A big thanks to all that helped.
Zein