Convert HTML string to plan text in SQL Server

create function dbo.StripHTML( @text varchar(max) ) returns varchar(max) as
begin
    declare @textXML xml
    declare @result varchar(max)
    set @textXML = REPLACE( @text, '&', '' );
    with doc(contents) as
    (
        select chunks.chunk.query('.') from @textXML.nodes('/') as chunks(chunk)
    )
    select @result = contents.value('.', 'varchar(max)') from doc
    return @result
end
go

select dbo.StripHTML('This <i>is</i> an <b>html</b> test')