Berlusconi's popularity slips after sex scandals

The approval rating of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has been dogged by a messy divorce and accusations of cavorting with teenage girls and escorts, has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time.

A poll yesterday had only 49 per cent expressing confidence in him as prime minister, four points down from the last time the same group, IPR Marketing, took it in May. Fifty per cent said they had "little or no" confidence.

The government's approval rating was unchanged: 44 per cent said they had "a lot or sufficient" confidence and 52 per cent said they had "little or none".

The poll was taken for La Repubblica newspaper, Italy's second-largest selling mainstream paper, which has been leading demands that Mr Berlusconi clear up aspects of his personal life.

It was published a day after the websites of L'Espresso weekly and La Repubblica posted recordings of conversations purported to be between Mr Berlusconi and Patrizia D'Addario, a high-end escort who says she and other women were paid to attend parties at Mr Berlusconi's residence in Rome.

Mr Berlusconi, 72, has not denied that the 42-year-old woman went to his home but has said he did not know she was an escort.

Ms D'Addario says she made the recordings on her cell phone during the night she spent with the Prime Minister or while involved in telephone conversations, one with Mr Berlusconi.

Mainstream newspapers re-published the conversations yesterday in full or in part, including one in which a man purported to be Mr Berlusconi says they should both take showers, and whoever finished first should wait in "the big bed".

Another conversation is purported to be between Ms D'Addario and Mr Berlusconi the next day, where he expresses surprise that Ms D'Addario says she has lost her voice "because we didn't scream".

Mr Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini on Monday dismissed the recordings as "totally unlikely and a product of the imagination", saying it was illegal to post or publish them.

One conversation is purportedly between Ms D'Addario and Giam-paolo Tarantini, a businessman who is being investigated on suspicion of providing paid escorts to curry political favour for an enterprise in the southern city of Bari, from where D'Addario also hails.

In one conversation, Ms D'Addario tells Mr Tarantini she had expected to receive money but did not, adding that Mr Berlusconi promised to help her solve a problem related to a real estate deal in the south.

L'Espresso website had a record 2.1 million hits on Monday after it posted the tapes.

The centre-left opposition says Mr Berlusconi must come clean on his private life because it contrasts with his public espousal of family and religious values, and because there is a risk that he or the government could be blackmailed.