Charlie Gilmour, the History student from Girton who hit national headlines after the December protests, has entered a non-specific guilty plea during a hearing at Kensington Crown Court.

The 21-year-old faces charges including throwing a bin at a Royal Convoy carrying Prince Charles and his wife the Duchess of Cornwall, as well as sitting on a protection officer's car.

He is also accused of smashing the window of a high street store.

While other Cambridge students are focusing on knuckling down to revision, Gilmour is having to juggle the prospect of a jail term. The judge has granted him bail until July 8 so that he can complete his exams.

Gilmour rose to notoriety after he was pictured hanging from a Union flag on the Cenotaph during the student demonstrations. In a statement that he'd hoped to act as a consolation for better-behaved protestors, the day after the demonstration Gilmour admitted: “I feel mortified that my moment of idiocy has distracted so much from the message the protest was trying to send out.”

As the adopted son of David Gilmour, the Pink Floyd guitarist, Charlie was an obvious target for media coverage of the London student protests over education cuts.

In Judge Nicholas Price QC’s statement, Gilmour was branded as a symbol of many incidences of student violence that took on December 10, including a police officer who was knocked from his horse and the officers who were attacked with flares.

A Cambridge University spokesman said only that the matter is “for the civil authorities.”