experimented on by aliens. According to Woodbine, when reading one of his novels the reader can always expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a trail of corpses, no small degree of name mispronunciation – characters commonly pronounce his name wrong, calling him everything from Woodlouse to Woodstock – and enough trenchcoat humour and ludicrous catchphrases to carry you through a month of rainy Thursdays. (Although some novels point out that the sex would be difficult given that Woodbine's four scenes lack a bedroom.) "Metafictional" Status Unlike most characters in Robert Rankin's work, who appear at inconsistent times and places but are nevertheless consistently the same person, Lazlo Woodbine's status as a real person is often questionable, with most of his appearances explicitly referring to his status as a character in fiction, and his appearance in the novel being simply an artificial creation (The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag) or simply the result of an individual suffering from delusions (Waiting for Godalming). Only in The Suburban Book of the Dead (Armageddon III: The Remake) has Lazlo Woodbine explicitly appeared as a real person, and even then he came from an alternate future and travelled back into the past to investigate a case (aided by Barry the Time Sprout). List of Appearances To date, Lazlo Woodbine – or some variation of him – has appeared in the following novels; The Suburban Book of the Dead (Armageddon III: The Remake) (working alongside Rex Mundi and Barry the Time Sprout The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (appears as a fictional character in a VR simulation that the main character is trapped in; results in some brief confusion as both characters are attempting to simultaneously write the story in the first person until they agree to allow Lazlo to do so) Waiting for Godalming (revealed over the course of the novel to be the 'barking mad' brother to the novel's main character of Icarus Smith, although Woodbine passes off his temporary assumption of the idiot brother identity as a means of allowing him to travel through the streets to the building where the final rooftop showdown will take place) Fandom of the Operator (The "real" Lazlo Woodbine briefly appears in the afterlife, complaining about his fictional namesake's treatment by the author) The Brightonomicon (Rizla – later revealed to be Jim Pooley of The Brentford Trilogy – dresses as Lazlo to tackle The Curious