How do I uninstall wordpad

That's probably the most laconic post I have read here.
As to your question: I think you cannot uninstall Wordpad, as it is a basic function of Windows. You can certainly break it by teleting the .exe file, but there is no "uninstall" funtion for it as far as I know. Then again, why would you want to uninstall it anyway? It probably uses 100kb of HD space and you can just ignore it if you don't like it.
 
I want to delete/disable Wordpad because it has "taken over" my .txt files which for a variety of reasons I want them to be available to other programs.
When I try to delete it - I get the msgbox -"File Access Denied".
So back to my original question -- how do I get rid of this truly irritating Wordpad ??