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| PERFORMER | Joey Mazzarino |
| DEBUT | 1992 |
Colambo is a Muppet lamb detective seen in a series of Sesame Street segments. His office is located at 45th and 8th Street in New York City. His specialty was solving nursery rhyme crimes, such as "Old Mother Hubbard's Heist."
Colambo was a semi-regular on the show from Season 23 to Season 27. He helped Nick Chicken solve the mystery of the missing chicken in Episode 3129. He also made appearances in the street plots of Episode 3100 and 3468. His last appearance to date was in Episode 3902 (Season 31), helping in the search for Oscar's pet elephant Fluffy. He made one of his sole appearances outside the show on The Phil Donahue Show on November 29, 1993.
The character is a parody of TV detective Columbo (played by Peter Falk, whose voice Colambo imitates). He shares Columbo's "one more question" mannerism and often talks about his never-seen wife. While often just called Colambo or "Detective Colambo," his rank is lieutenant (same as Columbo) according to "The Missing Pig" and "Old Mother Hubbard's Heist."
The character came about when the Sesame Street producers asked the Muppet performers to visit the Muppet Workshop and experiment with puppets to develop new characters, which would then be presented to the writing staff. Mazzarino found a little black lamb puppet and conceived of Colambo, recording a short infomercial with the character. The creative team liked the pitch and Mazzarino eventually was invited to join the writing staff as a result.[1][2] The theme for Colambo's stand-alone sketches was composed by Dave Conner.
