A man with just minutes to live after his throat was slashed had his life saved by a policeman.

Michael Rendell sliced Stephen Walsh’s neck with a broken wine glass, cutting his jugular vein and carotid artery.

But Pc Laurence East, who was one of the first people at the scene, held his hand over the wound for half an hour to stem the flow of blood.

Yesterday Rendell was branded a danger to the public and given an indeterminate jail sentence. He will not be released until he is deemed to no longer be a risk.

The 24-year-old had snorted a gram of cocaine and drank seven pints of strong lager and four whiskeys before the unprovoked attack in the Bell and Compass pub in Oxford city centre.

Victim Mr Walsh, 30, needed emergency surgery after the glass cut his jugular vein and carotid artery and severed nerves in his neck.

Rendell had only been out of prison for two months when he committed the offence in the early hours of November 20. He has served six prison sentences for eight violent offences including assaulting a number of police officers.

Prosecutor Cathy Olliver told Oxford Crown Court yesterday Mr Walsh was out celebrating a friend’s birthday at the New Road venue.

Mr Walsh was drinking at the bar when Rendell, whom he didn’t know, tugged at his shirt “up to four times”.

Miss Olliver said Mr Walsh and a friend moved away but Rendell struck him to the side of the neck from behind.

As blood poured from the victim’s wound, Rendell ran into the toilet, cleaned his hands, took off his shirt and demanded someone give him a fresh top. When police arrived to arrest him he hurled obscenities and attempted to headbutt an officer, Miss Olliver said.

Pc East was on his bicycle in New Inn Hall Street when he got the call.

Last night he said: “I didn’t do anything anybody else wouldn’t have done. It is just I had the knowledge to recognise what was going on.

“All I managed to do was keep enough fluids inside him until he got to the hospital so surgeons could fix him. But if you don’t manage to do that it’s game over.

“He had a very severe injury to his neck where his carotid artery had been cut, where you have one or two minutes between where you would then bleed out.”

Judge Mary Jane Mowat ruled Rendell was a danger to the public and jailed him indeterminately, insisting he must serve at least three years in prison before he can be considered for release.