John Smith gave me an opportunity to try out fantastico, and I had a quick experiment. By using fantastico, you can skip over the need to follow the intallation intructions which come with the drupal download. File transfer, making the directory, creating the database, running the script to make the tables, and setting up the first user (admin) are all done for you.

But you will still need to be able to ftp and grant directory permissions in order install additional modules, themes, and allow file uploads.

So a basic install up and running in seconds, and there's no reason why starting out this way should inhibit further progress so long as the ISP also allows FTP access as well as via control panel, which they almost certainly will unless it's an educational institution or something like that rather than a commercial ISP, and even then it's probably just a question of asking for the ftp account details for your domain.