php regex to remove HTML

Before we start, strip_tags() doesn't work.

now,

I've got some data that needs to be parsed, the problem is, I need to get rid of all the HTML that has been formated very strangely. the tags look like this: (notice the spaces)

< p > blah blah blah < / p > < a href= " link.html " > blah blah blah < /a >

All the regexs I've been trying aren't working, and I don't know enough about regex formating to make them work. I don't care about preserving anything inside of the tags, and would prefer to get rid of the text inside a link if I could.

Anyone have any idea?

(I really need to just sit down and learn regular expressions one day)