Customising the first item in a view As a block on my homepage I'm trying to output:

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&gt;&lt;img&gt;&lt;p&gt;Node 1&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&gt;Node 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&gt;Node 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&gt;Node 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;


where each &lt;li&gt; represents a node, and the image/text supplied by CCK fields attached to each node.

Currently, I'm using a block view to output nodes 2-4, and an Attachment view to present the first node as outlined here:
http://www.agileapproach.com/blog-entry/the-views2-attachment-display

The problem is my output ends up more like this:

&lt;div class="attachment attachment-before"&gt;
  &lt;div class="view view-homepage-news .."&gt;
    &lt;div class="item-list"&gt;
      &lt;ul&gt;
        &lt;li class="views-row ..."&gt;  
          &lt;a&gt;&lt;img&gt;&lt;p&gt;Node 1&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/a&gt;            
        &lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;/ul&gt;
    &lt;/div&gt;  
  &lt;/div&gt; &lt;!-- /.view --&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="item-list"&gt;
  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li class="views-row ..."&gt;&lt;a&gt;Node 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li class="views-row ..."&gt;&lt;a&gt;Node 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li class="views-row ..."&gt;&lt;a&gt;Node 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;


I can probably bend that output suit my purpose, but it will involve a lot of templating and configuration. I'd also like to avoid using CSS and/or JavaScript to modify the output, unless that's my only option.

Given this, what's the easiest way to get the output closer to what I need it to be?

Edit: here's some rough php code I'm using in the customfield php code field (based on Jeremy French's suggestion:
 Here's the code I'm using in my PHP Code customfield:

&lt;?php
  ++$static;
  if ($static == 1) {
    $nd=node_load($data-&gt;nid);
    $img_path = imagecache_create_path('news_image_thumbnail', $nd-&gt;field_image[0]['filepath']);
    print '&lt;a&gt;&lt;img src="' . $img_path . '"&gt;&lt;p&gt;Node 1&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/a&gt;';
  } else {
    print "&lt;a&gt;Node $static&lt;/a&gt;";
  }
?&gt;
I personally use preprocess functions to do this, something like the following:

function HOOK_preprocess_views_view_fields(&amp;$vars) {
  if ($vars['view']-&gt;name == 'VIEW_NAME' &amp;&amp; $vars['view']-&gt;row_index == 1) {
    // Do stuff here.
  }
}