It is a classic example of comedy arising from an absurd situation which the participants take entirely seriously (comic irony), and a demonstration of the construction of a sketch in order to draw a laugh from the audience with almost every line.
Although it was initially omitted from the London production of Beyond the Fringe (due to One Over The Eight running concurrently at a nearby theatre), it was reinstated for the show's transfer to Broadway.
A version of the sketch, in which Spiggott is applying for a job as a runner, appeared in Cook and Moore's 1978 film The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The premise of the sketch is then laid out thus: The agent goes on to point out that Tarzan is "a role which traditionally involves the use of a two-legged actor" and that it would be unusual for the part to be taken by a "unidexter", but Spiggott's enthusiasm is undimmed.
The sketch continues in a similar vein with the agent observing that at least Spiggott scores over a man with no legs at all (in the later versions, Spiggot enthusiastically agrees that he has "twice as many" as a man with none) and that there is always a chance that no two-legged actor will apply for the role "in, say, the next eighteen months," in which case Spiggott, as a "unidexter," is "just the sort of person we shall be attempting to contact telephonically."