Richard Herring has revealed how he and his double act partner Stewart Lee were once rejected as potential sketch writers for mainstream double act Little and Large.

Herring has recently put a number of artefacts from his archive on sale on ebay and they include a rejection letter from the BBC after he and Lee had submitted some ideas to the makers of Syd Little and Eddie Large's hit BBC series.

The rejection letter, dated September 18, 1990, comes from producer Bill Wilson, who wrote: "Thank you for your material submitted for the "Little and Large Show". We read it with interest but unfortunately did not consider it suitable for production..."

The material included a sketch in which Eddie buys a hotdog from a van at the sea front and coats it in mustard and ketchup. When he takes a bite the lubricated sausage flies out of the bun and lands in the sea. A few seconds later Syd dressed as a frogman emerges from the water and the  sausage has got stuck in his snorkel. Sid waves his fist. Eddie looks at the camera in disbelief and then runs off down the sea front.

Herring recalls their playful attempts to break into the mainstream at the time. "We really wrote for Little and Large as a joke (though kept the sketches broad enough to possibly be included as we could have done with the money). We did a few prank letters for jobs - I applied to be controller of Radio 1 Or Radio 4.  We also sent in some deliberately awful song lyrics for Hugh Laurie for a Bit of Fry and Laurie as we’d taken against him for some reason. They didn’t write back."

They did, however, have some success. "We ended up writing for Michael Barrymore who liked our stuff but his team dumped all our jokes from the broadcast. Barrymore was very nice to us and told the girls we were with at the recording that they should stick with us because we were going to be big (they didn’t though)."