Symbols such as £ end up being  in the database

Any posts with symbols such as £ or & or ♥ end up being  or worse. It doesn’t show in the admin panel on the edit post page, but it is saved in the database as  and shows on the actual live blog as  too.

Here are the relevant tables in the database

And the wp-config snippet:

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', 'utf8');

Believe me, I have tried every single tutorial and tip and suggestion that you can find on Google.

I realise it’s a UTF8 encoding issue. But my database is UTF8. My wp-config says UTF8. I’ve used every plugin and SQL snippet to convert my database, tables and all posts inbetween.

Not a single thing has worked – I’ve been at this for 3 weeks now and I’m about to explode.

So please… somebody help me!