Weird problems with search

I have a couple of problems with my search page:
1. The layout breaks (and an error message appears at the top)of the results page when searching for a word or phrase that occurs right at the start of a longish (sorry for not being able to be more specific about the length) post title that appears as the most relevant result. For example,
http://djsilkworm.com/?s=poll
http://djsilkworm.com/?s=six+outstanding
2. Non alphabetical characters aren’t handled very well: http://djsilkworm.com/?s=%26amp;dubstep

My search.php is at http://codepad.org/GnxkvUsF if you want to have a look.

Thanks for your help!