In 1950, he understudied Richard Burton as Konstantin in a Swansea production of The Seagull. Orson Welles, who directed Williams on stage in London in Moby Dick, tried to persuade him to come to New York to play the Fool in King Lear. Judy Garland knew his sketches by heart, having “worn out the grooves” of the vinyl recordings of his 1959 theatrical revue, Pieces of Eight (in which his understudy was firebrand-to-be Ken Loach, who later said of him: “He was very nice … but he could be capricious. Sometimes, he just cut you dead”).
From this profile of Kenneth Williams in the Graun.