ITALIAN OPPOSITION leader Silvio Berlusconi is ending an unhappy political year on a particularly low note, with Naples magistrates investigating him on suspicion of corruption and his private telephone calls emblazoned across the newspapers.

Things have not gone much better for Prime Minister Romano Prodi, whose quarrelsome coalition and wafer-thin majority in the Senate have given the impression of a weak government staggering from crisis to crisis.

It is the narrow Senate majority that lies at the root of Berlusconi's current embarrassment. Naples prosecutors allege the centre-right leader offered wavering centre-left senators money and other inducements if they would turn their backs on Prodi and help him bring down the government.

Among Berlusconi's targets for recruitment was Nino Randazzo, an Italo-Australian representing Italians abroad in the constituency of Africa-Asia-Oceania. The antipodean senator, who has confirmed the approach from Berlusconi, was reportedly offered a post as under-secretary in a future Berlusconi government and up to 2 million in electoral expenses.

Randazzo reportedly told magistrates he had been offered a written contract and told that "even just a little absence" from the senate at voting time would be enough to satisfy Berlusconi.

Even more embarrassing for Berlusconi, who combines leadership of Forza Italia - the largest centre-right party - with ownership of the country's biggest media empire, was the content of his telephone conversations with Agostino Sacca, a political sympathiser and director of fiction at the state broadcaster RAI.

Last week, audio tapes of the conversations, devoted in large part to promoting the careers of aspiring actresses who had come to Berlusconi's notice, were posted on the website of the left-leaning weekly magazine L'Espresso.

In one conversation Berlusconi recommends actress Elena Russo, right, for a role: "She has been left practically without work and, since she is a very proud person, the only way one can help her is by giving her work."

Berlusconi assured him the favour would be repaid when Sacca left RAI to set up in private business.

But the strangest of Berlusconi's recommendations concerned actress Evelina Manna, whose career appears to have been a bargaining chip in the battle for control of the Senate.

Berlusconi tells Sacca: "It's nothing to do with me, it's something let's say I'm trying to gain a majority in the Senate."

The implication appears to be that a government senator was contemplating betraying Prodi in return for Manna being given a part in an RAI drama.

Berlusconi reacted with fury to the allegations, saying his negotiations with centre-left senators were a physiological part of political life and that some of the senators considering defecting to him had been intimidated by the Naples prosecutors, who had interrogated them for up to eight hours.

Berlusconi was particularly infuriated by publication of his intercepted phone calls.

"I have been exposed without reason to public ridicule," he said. "There is nothing to worry about, apart from the fact that we are in a country where liberty no longer exists."

And he launched an attack on RAI, where it was impossible to find work unless you "prostituted yourself" or supported the left.

Berlusconi insisted he had intervened to help people who had been sidelined for their political views.

The Naples investigation follows another, in Milan, which produced telephone intercepts revealing the extent of Berlusconi's political control over RAI when he was prime minister.

The phone taps - some published last month - revealed contacts between RAI officials and their colleagues at Berlusconi's Mediaset broadcasting company to co-ordinate current affairs coverage, bury bad news for the government, and ensure frequent mention of Berlusconi's name on a popular political talkshow.

The news comes at a bad time for Berlusconi, whose efforts to relaunch Forza Italia as a broader-based People of Liberty party appears to have backfired, causing a mutiny among his centre-right allies.

It is the end of a difficult year for Italian politicians. They have been pilloried by comic Beppe Grillo and denounced in books as idle, and being shielded by a tame, state-subsidised press.

Whether or not the corruption charges stick, the scandal has discredited Italy's political establishment still further.

It is difficult to know what is more damaging: the idea power could change hands in a G8 member country on the basis of TV casting decisions, or that political recommendations are so prevalent that it is impossible for a budding actress to get work without the whimsical support of an elderly political admirer.

The latter view is held by many young Italians now seeking their fortune abroad - some in senator Randazzo's Australia.