Rizzo the Rat "Midnight Cowboy". Steve Whitmire created the character, based on rats he had previously made out of bottles. Rizzo first appeared in episode 418 of "The Muppet Show", as one of many rats following Christopher Reeve backstage. He can be seen mugging and reacting to practically every line of dialogue. He remained a scene-stealing background figure through the final season, occasionally performing with Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem. By the time of "The Muppets Christmas Carol", Whitmire had been performing Rizzo for around 12 years. After the series, he appeared in "The Great Muppet Caper" as a bellboy in a
DR Big Band When Niels-Jørgen Kaiser, DR's head of entertainment, decided that DR had to have its own jazz band, it was without regard for economics. He wanted national radio to reflect that jazz was active in Copenhagen clubs. During the first few decades, the New Radio Dance Orchestra, which later became the DR Big Band, acquired a reputation that could attract popular jazz musicians. With the fall of the radio and TV monopoly in the 1980s, and later when DR moved out to 'DR City' in the 2000s, the struggle for funding for DR's large orchestra became fierce. Chris Minh Doky, the