Empty gridview cells and checking for empty string

[=?Utf-8?B?U2F2dm91bGlkaXMgSW9yZGFuaXM=?=]

In a RowDataBound event, I want to check if a column is empty (it's a simple
column, not a template with a label in it). I use the following syntax to get
the value from the cell:

s = e.row.cells(1).text

but s returns " " so I can't use String.IsNullOrEmpty(s) function, because
it's not empty.

What can I do?

TIA
Iordanis

[=?Utf-8?B?U2F2dm91bGlkaXMgSW9yZGFuaXM=?=]

The post displayed the value returned from the cell as " ", while it is
actually & n b s p; when I see it when debugging.