How to prevent p tags from being generated

I’m using this mini-loop on my frontpage.

<?php query_posts('cat=3&showposts="1'); ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<a href='<?php the_permalink() ?>'><?php the_content(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Basically it shows the first post from a category which is made up of image posts (no text)

As you can see the_content is wrapped inside the_permalink. The problem here is that the_content automatically generates <p></p> tags around the content output.

This is undesirable because having paragraph tags within links does not validate.

Is there a way of modifying the_content tag so it excludes the <p> tags?

Thanks