Now magazine claims to have verified the authenticity of the alleged emails at the centre of the "relationship" row between Cheryl Cole and MC Harvey.

Cole and Harvey have been engulfed in an argument for days after Now magazine published an interview with Harvey in which the So Solid Crew man said the pair had a "relationship" after Cole separated from her husband Ashley.

In a statement on Now's website, legal advisor to the magazine Tim Parish said in a statement that he has seen "emails" exchanged between Cole and Harvey - and Cole's mother too - and concluded that they are genuine. He said:

"I was asked to verify the authenticity of the emails between Cheryl Cole and Michael Harvey as a proof of a relationship between the couple. The emails I was shown dated back to 2010 and were correspondence to and from Cheryl Cole and Michael Harvey and also between Michael Harvey and Cheryl's mother Joan Callaghan. The emails give details of her feelings about The X Factor, pictures she sent to Michael Harvey as well as personal conversations between the pair. I concluded that the messages were real, had not been doctored in any way and confirm he was in a romantic relationship with the sender."