PM in UCP (templates question)

[Charged]

I have stumbled on a slight problem with my site design.

I have squashed vb into my existing site design and most of it is working fine. The problem I have is that if you are viewing a pm it overflows the container.

Now I can edit the postbit to make it fit, but then the rest of the normal posts are messed up as they also use the postbit.

I can see 2 ways of solving this:

first way would be to remove the user cp menu from the left hand side of the pm when you are viewing them (I have fixed the rest of the screens with this there so its not an issue)

I don't see how I can do this from editing the pm_showpm template, thought it would be a case of deleting the code for the menu but doesn't look like it is

The second way would be if I can duplicate postbit and make an edited version, which I can then call from pm_showpm instead of the normal postbit.

I tried just coping the whole postbit and making a new template and then changing the name in pm_showpm, though this doesn't seem to work. Still learning how this kinda stuff all fits together.

So any help would be appreciated, I think the second method would be better but either should achieve what I am after.

thanks in advance