Which will go "BOOM" against any of the "uglier" column types (TEXT/NTEXT, or any of the BLOB types in the newer editions....)

I never did quite get the reasoning for subjecting your server to such torture. Capturing a snapshot of the old row as it was is painless (compared to this), so bringing a server to its knees in order to order your log in a format like this (which you can achieve through a report) just doesn't work for me.

Personally speaking - if you're hell bent on having your final audit table in this way - I'd suggest you generate this particular format off-line. Just snapshot the changed rows in the trigger, then script it out to a "permanent audit table" during some scheduled process running outisde of the trigger.