Change MySQL port

I'm trying to run MySQL on port 23 instead of 3306 due to blocked connections at work. I don't run a telnet server so port 23 is open, but whenever I change the port in my.cnf to port 23, I can't get the MySQL service to start. Is there any way around this?

 

Which distribution do you use? Any errors in the logs?
What's the output of

Code:

netstat -tap

?