A 'mortified' Gordon Brown has been forced to apologise to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan for 'any unintended mistake' after he spelt her son's name wrong in a letter of condolence. The Prime Minister telephoned Jacqui Janes yesterday after learning of her distress over the handwritten letter, sent after her son Jamie, 20, of the 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards, was killed by an explosion on October 5. In their conversation, Mr Brown said he had assured Mrs Janes that he meant no offence by his gaffe.

Personal apology: Gordon Brown telephoned Jacqui Janes - pictured holding a photo of her son Jamie, who was killed in Afghanistan - after misspelling the soldier name in a letter of condolence

In a statement today, the PM said: 'I take very seriously my responsibility to the bereaved.

'Every time I write a letter to mothers and fathers and partners who have suffered bereavement to express my sincere condolences, it is a moment of personal sadness to me. And I am in awe of the bravery and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces. I send a handwritten letter to every family and I often write to more than one member of the family. I have telephoned Jacqui Janes to apologise for any unintended mistake in the letter.'

He went on: 'To all other families whom I have written to, I can only apologise if my handwriting is difficult to read.

'I have at all times acted in good faith seeking to do the right thing. I do not think anyone will believe that I write letters with any intent to cause offence.'

Mr Brown's letter began 'Dear Mrs James'. He then scribbled out a mistake when writing the soldier's first name, Jamie, causing his mother to accuse the PM of disrespecting her son's memory.

Mrs Janes, 47, had earlier said: 'He couldn't even be bothered to get our family name right. That made me so angry.

'Then I saw he had scribbled out a mistake in Jamie's name.

Mr Brown letter contained the following errors - he got the family's surname wrong and scribbled on the name Jamie, wrote 'you' instead of your, and misspelt greatest, condolences, colleagues and security

'The very least I would expect from Gordon Brown is to get his name right.'

Mr Brown made a further five spelling mistakes - 'greatst' for greatest; 'condolencs' instead of condolences; 'you' for your; 'colleagus' for colleagues; and 'securiity' for security - in the letter.

He ended with a repetition - by writing 'my sincere condolences' followed by 'Yours sincerely'.

'The letter was scrawled so quickly I could hardly even read it and some of the words were half-finished,' Mrs Janes said.

'It's just disrespectful.'

She added: 'In the days after Jamie's death I got letters from Prince Philip, Buckingham Palace, the Defence Secretary and his regiment.

'They were all written from the heart and made me feel Jamie's death was important to them.

'Then I got Gordon Brown's. I only got through the first four paragraphs before I threw it across the room in disgust.

'I re-read it later. He said, "I know words can offer little comfort." When the words are written in such a hurry and the letter is littered with mistakes, they offer no comfort.

'It was an insult to Jamie and all the good men and women who have died out there. How low a priority was my son that he could send me a disgraceful, hastily scrawled insult of a letter?

'He finished by asking if there was any way he could help.

'One thing he can do is never, ever, send a letter out like that to another dead soldier's family. Type it or get someone to check it. And get the name right.'

A Downing Street spokesman said: 'This is a Prime Minister who treats these things with enormous care and dignity and would be mortified to feel that someone had felt this way about a letter that he had sent.'

Mr Brown's latest gaffe comes after he found himself accused of neglecting to bow after he laid his wreath at the Cenotaph yesterday.

- Dailymail