A Hove student has been jailed for 16 months for violent disorder during a protest against tuition fee rises.
Charlie Gilmour, 21, the son of Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour and the novelist Polly Samson, was bailed in May so that he could complete his final exams at Cambridge University.
He pleaded guilty before being bailed and today he returned to Kingston Crown Court to be sentenced.
The court was told that the former Lancing College pupil, who was studying for a history degree at Girton College, Cambridge, had been on a drink and drug-fuelled rampage.
He was accused of throwing a bin at a convoy of cars, one of which was carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.
He sat on a royal protection officer’s car and smashed a window and attacked the window of Topshop in Oxford Street before making off with a mannequin.
And he was pictured hanging from a union flag at the Cenotaph in a photograph that appeared on newspaper front pages and in television news bulletins.
The image prompted widespread revulsion and Gilmour issued an apology.
The barrister David Spens said in mitigation for Gilmour that he was ashamed of himself but had been out of his mind on LSD and valium.
Mr Spens said that Gilmour had been bingeing almost continuously on drink and drugs since August last year after an emotionally painful meeting with his biological father, the poet Heathcote Williams.
Judge Nicholas Price praised Gilmour for his apology but said that he did not believe his claim about not realising the significance of the Cenotaph as a memorial to Britain’s war dead.
He said that Gilmour had been out of control and that his behaviour had been outrageous and deeply offensive.
