A 21-year-old student from Hove has issued an apology for climbing on the Cenotaph in London during the tuition fee protests on Thursday.
Charlie Gilmour, the son of Pink Floyd star David Gilmour, was pictured on television and the front of several newspapers.
He was also reported to have been part of the mob that surrounded the car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla on their way to the Royal Variety Performance.
Charlie Gilmour said: “My intention was not to attack or defile the Cenotaph.
“Running along with a crowd of people who had just been violently repelled by the police, I got caught up in the spirit of the moment.
“I feel additionally mortified that my moment of idiocy has distracted so much from the message yesterday’s protest was trying to send out.
“I did not realise that it was the Cenotaph and, if I had, I certainly would not have done what I did.
“Those who are commemorated by the Cenotaph died to protect the very freedoms that allow the people of Britain the right to protest and I feel deeply ashamed to have, although unintentionally and unknowingly, insulted the memory of them.
“Ignorance is the poorest of excuses but I am sincerely sorry.”
Charlie Gilmour went to Lancing College before studying history at Cambridge University.
He was adopted by David Gilmour after he married Charlie’s mother, the author Polly Samson.
The family recently bought a six-storey home in Hove.
