"It was my dream house and I had just decorated it as I was planning to have lodgers living with me," she said.

“Years ago, a room in somebody's house was called a lodger,” he said.

“If it was a house, I’d be a lodger or a tenant or whatever you call it in America,” he laughs.

On the day of the recording, Mrs Thaxter said her lodger had phoned and said he had failed the lie detector test.

A man has been found guilty of murdering his lodger before scattering his severed body parts in packages and a suitcase.