Counting the number of posts displayed on a page?

[LanciaStratos]

OK, I've got a right column down the side of my forum pages, the code of which is contained in my footer template. When viewing a thread, I'd like to have access to a variable that contains the number of posts being displayed on that particular page. I know that $post[postcount] obviously exists within the scope of postbit, but that's not exactly what I want nor is it usable from within the footer template. Is there another way to accomplish this that I haven't yet thought of? Any simple way to modify the source code?

(Why do I want to do this? Basically, I want to show more advertisements in the right hand column as the number of posts on the page increase. These obviously extend the page downward and I would love to take advantage of that otherwise wasted real estate.)