Natalie Rowe, the former escort agency boss who claimed to be friends with chancellor George Obsorne, has told an Australian broadcaster that her phone was hacked by the News of the World.

She told ABC News that Scotland Yard has told her that her mobile phone number and other details appeared on notebooks seized from the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was employed by the paper.

Rowe, who ran an agency called Black Beauties in the 1990s, sold a story about the friendship with Osborne to the Sunday Mirror in 2005. She claimed at the time that she and Osborne had taken cocaine together. Obsorne has always denied this.

Rowe told the ABC's PM programme that she was "surprised" to see the same story appear in the News of the World on the same day. The paper was edited by Andy Coulson at the time.