Non-perl way: If VT100 escape sequences are the same as the markup on man pages then you can pipe it through col -b as I do to get a plain text version of those man pages.

e.g. man bash | col -b > bash.txt

If not then I have completely mixed myself up and can be safely ignored!

   larryk                                          
perl -le "s,,reverse killer,e,y,rifle,lycra,,print"