[Distutils] Replacing pip.exe with a Python script

I'm looking at the possibility of replacing the current setuptools entry point based pip executables with Python scripts. The biggest problem is that a script "pip.py" shadows the pip package, making "import pip" fail. I can get round this by deleting sys.path[0] (the location of the currently running script) but how robust is that? Are there any corner cases where it would break? Or alternatively, is there a better way to do this rather than messing directly with sys.path? I suspect this is a fairly common question, but my Google-fu is failing me :-( Sorry, I know this is a basic Python coding question - in my defence, it's for something related to the current pip discussions :-) Paul