A mobile phone company which sent a letter to a customer addressed to Mr Pedo File has apologised to her.

O2 sent the letter to the home of mother-of-two Zowie Sharples, from Bolton in Greater Manchester.

Ms Sharples had taken advantage of a special offer by sending a request to O2 for new sim cards for her phone.

When they arrived in a blue O2-branded envelope they were addressed to "Mr Pedo File".

She took the letter to the O2 shop in Bolton town centre but said staff there were unable to help.

'Reviewing systems'

A spokeswoman for the company said: "We've looked into Ms Sharples' complaint and can see that an order for a free sim was placed through an advert on msn.co.uk.

"It appears this order was placed using the offending name and e-mail address along with Ms Sharples' home address.

"We will be investigating in more detail how the order could have been place in this name.

"Thousands of O2 sim cards are ordered by new and existing O2 customers every month and, while we do have procedures in place to ensure profanity is blocked, the way the name was spelt meant this was not picked up by our system.

"We apologise for the upset this has caused and we will be reviewing our systems to prevent this happening again."