Phil,
Do you know how to decorate a class in your own module? If not watch some of my tutorials on the subject. (Link in sig)
That should get you warmed up. After you have your module setup and going you want to decorate the class that Tony referenced above.
Then include this in the code of your decorated class. This should be the only method that you have to define in your class, otherwise the file will be empty except for opening tag, namespace and opening class defintion:
Code:
/**
* Return true if checkout layout is used
*
* @return boolean
*/
public function isCheckoutLayout()
{
return false;
}