Remove html tags from content

Hi i am trying to remove html formating from the content.

am using the following code

<?php

$string1 = the_content();
$string = strip_tags($string1);

echo $string ;

?>

how ever this is not working for me.

when i echo the content it shows up as <p> text text </p>

i want to remove the <p> </p> tags from the content.

How can i do this.. please advise.

Thanks in Advance. !!