strip tags not working - any ideas ?

Hello all I am trying to strip all HTML and other tags from a document, I have read the docs and written a 4 line script that should do the job (from my point of view ! ). However it seems to have literally no effect. Heres the script : <? $file=readfile("http://namx.co.uk/webstats/"); if (!($string = strip_tags($file))) print "<br> error ! <br>"; $strings = strtolower($string); print "strings: $strings"; ?> It doesnt lower case anything and it no strips no tags at , bascially its still the same source as it was unchanged. Obviously theres something I am missing here, but what ? Thanks for your thoughts Neil