Found this article which has a handy ‘escape’ function:

// replace any non-ascii character with its hex code.
function escape($value) {
    $return = '';
    for($i = 0; $i < strlen($value); ++$i) {
        $char = $value[$i];
        $ord = ord($char);
        if($char !== "'" && $char !== "\"" && $char !== '\\' && $ord >= 32 && $ord <= 126)
            $return .= $char;
        else
            $return .= '\\x' . dechex($ord);
    }
    return $return;
}