Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it .. I'll try and look into some of these .. The last option 'Get people to run proxy servers for you on their own internet connections' .. Does this mean you can use other peoples IPs as proxies or am I thinking about this wrong lol?
You are thinking correctly 
Other people each have a public facing IP that they receive from their internet connection. If you can get them to run a proxy server for you, then you can connect through that server and it appears to the sites you visit that you're vising from this other person's IP address.
Example Scenario
Your IP: 1.4.1.4
Others Person's IP: 2.3.2.3:
You -> visit Website -> Website sees '1.4.1.4 has connected to the webserver'
You -> connect to Proxy running on Other Person's PC -> visit Website -> Website sees '2.3.2.3 has connected to the webserver' (even though its just you on your own PC running your regular browser with proxy settings)
One last thing you want to keep in mind: Two real proxy server settings that are very important to distinguish between. One is
Fully Anonymous and the other is
Transparent.
Transparent proxy is not what you want, cause it can even
forward your REAL IP to wherever you are connecting, making it obvious you are using a proxy and tracing right back to your actual connection.
Fully Anonymous proxies never leak your your IP and may even strip out various browser headers to keep you even more anonymous.
Just for an extra educational tidbit (this is not something you should concern yourself for proxy usage in IM for the most part): There are advanced techniques that can be used to 'de-anonymize' a person using even TOR (which uses a chain of proxies.) Everything from what browser you are using [User agent], to how big your window size \ screen resolution is, to what plugins you have installed, versions, etc... are ALL fingerprints that can be used for tracking you. There are even advanced
timing attacks that measure how long it takes for packets to travel that help geo-locate potential regions of where the connection is originating from. All of this is used to narrow down the range of potential targets by people in cyber security to do things like help take down dark web sites and other such goings.
Good luck!