Is there a free alternative to copilot that doesn't require the helpee to do anything ever I want to set up my Grandfather's mac (running lion) so that it's got a vnc server always running that I can connect to anytime without any input from him. The point is to try to circumvent the hour long support calls I end up doing when his "email is broken", by being able to take control of his computer and do it for him.

I've tried setting him up with Copilot (from fogcreek), but that still involves talking him through launching the application and letting me connect. Are any of the mac-native things (like ichat, icloud, screen sharing?) going to be any better? What do you recommend? (I run 10.6.8)
Simplest and cheapest would be to setup iChat on both computers and use Ask to Share screen feature from context menu.

Usually it will work from the start. Sometimes you need to configure router, here is a list of ports used by Apple services. Enabling uPNP or NAT-PMP on the router will usually work. In any case you need fast enough connection for it to work (at least 300kbps recommended still it's better to have faster one but what is more important is quality of the connection).