They contain suggestions that the Australian conman would like to sell his story and a contradiction of Cherie Blair's line that she did not read papers relating to his extradition proceedings.

Extract from a call between Ms Pelloti and Mr Foster at 0915 GMT on Thursday.

Mr Foster: "Carole made a big mistake getting involved, she should have shut up."

Ms Pelloti: "She should have shut her mouth and it was going away."

Mr Foster: "She's in the middle of it. She's going to get caught in the lie. This is just more reason for me to come out now and clarify. I can even come out to save her. If she starts to get slaughtered in the papers tomorrow I'll come out and say I've got to protect her."

Ms Pelloti: "Is it true that Cherie never read the papers?"

Mr Foster: "No of course not, she read them. I think Carole is stupid. She was trying to protect a friend and it was a knee-jerk reaction."

Call between Mr Foster and Ms Pelloti at 1130 GMT on Thursday

Mr Foster: "It's me. The trouble we're having at the moment is that the Sunday Times will pay me any amount of money I want for my story as long as it goes to a charity and not me.

"Yeah, basically it's not their policy to pay a criminal. So even though there's no criminal act involved here I mean, I seem to be having trouble getting them to actually pay me."

Ms Pelloti: "What are you going to gain by it? Nothing?"

Mr Foster: "No."

Ms Pelloti: "No, just say you've lost a lot over this. You're a charity, you know. I wouldn't do it for a charity."

Call between Ms Pelloti and Mr Foster at 1156 GMT

Ms Pelloti: "I don't see any point in you doing it for nothing Pete.

Mr Foster: "No, I'm going to hold out for money for another 24 hours. I'm just going to get back strong now and say that."

Call between Mr Foster and Ms Pelloti at 1838 GMT: "There's a story going out tomorrow in the biggest selling trade journal that I've got a 300,000-word autobiography and publishers are scrambling to get the rights - and what he's hoping that might do is get the publishers out of the woodwork.

"The Mail might also do a serialisation on the book and he's trying to put that together also. A couple of, you know, irons in the fire there. But I don't think anyone is going to write a cheque for �100,000 for me to tell my story or anything."

Ms Pelloti later seemingly refers to the financial consequences of the row

Ms Pelloti: "Tell me truthfully, how long can we survive?"

Mr Foster: "A couple of months. If someone had come along and given me �100,000 for my story then beautiful. But they just won't do it. They are just saying I'm a crook and a conman and they won't pay it.

"One of the editors said to us today it's a sad state of affairs when we can believe the word of a PM's wife but we can't trust the word of a conman."

Ms Pelloti: "They are not allowed to do it?"

Mr Foster: "That's what they are saying. They won't pay me - just listen to me. You're always looking for a miracle like a mail order ad or something, right? I'm as frustrated as you they will not pay."