Who on middle-earth is Lotho?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Let's not forget that Tolkien was entirely capable of winging it, without much regard for what he might or might not have written before. Most of the "lore" of Middle-earth was ret-conned afterwards, after all. And sometimes he didn't bother; Lotho suddenly became an intermediate villain at the end of the book because the biook demanded an intermediate villain (entirely offstage- Lotho of course is never met, being dead and all). At least Lotho made an appearance in the opening chapters, whereas Rose Cotton is never mentioned at all until the Scouring (I will very grudgingly give Jackson a brownie point for working Rosie into the beginning of FR, which T should have but didn't).