New layout of main content area?

Is there a simple way to achieve a main content area that will effectively give me the following layout?

(note the above is a mockup)

What I am trying to do is display a K2 item using split content modules.
- The item date, title and image appear in a module in the maintop module position
- The author icon appears in the left module position
- The actual item appears in the default content area.

(note the above is also a mockup)

As per my previous post, this doesn't need answering by Cedric until he returns from his holiday but if anyone else has any input, I would be interested to hear from them.

Answering my own question and I thought I had found a possible "trick/hack" to my problem.

If I turned off maintop and centertop, I could then switch the left and right columns (by dragging them) in the Template Creator interface.

However I have now realised it's not quite as simple as that because the page is broken when you don't have content in both the left and right module positions.