I refactored the function that I found at the following URL... look for the answer posted by "dudeNumber4"...

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.StripHtmlTags

(@HtmlText XML )

RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)

AS

BEGIN

RETURN (

SELECT contents.value('.', 'nvarchar(max)')

FROM (

SELECT contents = chunks.chunk.query('.') FROM @HtmlText.nodes('/') AS chunks(chunk)

) doc

)

END

;

I tried turning it into an iTVF instead of a scalar function and it took twice as long to run.