[Marco van Herwaarden]

PHP Code:

global $vbphrase; 


This should be (first line seems best) inside your function.
so:

PHP Code:

if (!function_exists('handle_sp')) 
{ 
    function handle_sp(&$parser, $sp_body, $options) 
    { 
        global $vbphrase; //added by Boofo advice later 
        if ($options == null) 
............. 


For more information see the PHP manual on Variable Scope.