Student Oliver Rawlings posted offensive sexual messages on Twitter — but it was the fear of his mother being dragged into the subsequent row that led him to issue a grovelling apology.

The former Habonim Dror group leader was publicly humiliated this week after sending the tweets to historian Mary Beard.

Three years ago Mr Rawlings featured in the JC after volunteering at a Mitzvah Day project in Manchester.

But the former private school pupil showed a less charitable side when he called Professor Beard a “filthy old slut” and made sexual comments about her.

She re-posted his tweet to her 44,500 followers, one of whom offered to provide Prof Beard with Mr Rawlings’s mother’s address in Hale, Manchester. It was at this point that the 20-year-old sent another tweet “sincerely apologising” and thanking Prof Beard for “showing me the error of my ways”.

When contacted by the JC, Mr Rawlings, a Nottingham University JSoc member, refused to comment and put the phone down. But his aunt, Joy Rawlings, told the Daily Mail that his parents, Joanne and Martin, would “not be impressed in the slightest”.