display_errors off and custom error pages

I've spent the last couple of hours trying to work this out to no avail. I have recently moved over to a managed dedi server and no can ask my host to change my php.ini. I have found out that the 'display_errors' in the php.ini is set to off and error file logging is off. I would like to be able log to file which is easy to do from the ini file but also to show a custom error page if there is an error on one of the pages. I thought I would be able to use a custom error handler such as - ob_start(); // custom error handler function e($type, $msg, $file, $line) { blah blah ob_end_clean(); // display error page exit(); } set_error_handler("e"); But all I get is a blank page. Does having display_errors off mean that I can't use a custom error handler? I have also tried adding *set_ini*('*display_errors*','1') but this keeps giving me a blank page. Can someone tell me the best (and most secure way) of having custom error pages in php. Ideally I would like it all set from a central place so that i only need to change one file for all the websites on our server. I didn't really want to change display_errors to on as I was told this wasn't very secure- i don't want error messages on any of my pages, I just want a simple error 500 server error page. Many thanks, Ian