Originally Posted by
1Aturnleft
There used to be a somewhat cheesy 'drama' called Mile High about 20yrs ago on a British satellite channel about a low cost airline called Fresh. In the series many of the regular characters were crew working for the airline. One character was Captain Nigel Croker who was your typical suarve, debonair captain in charge of all the lives of those on board..... And with an eye for the ladies.... but he was also your typical sensationalist TV soap character who was having lots of fun around the Fresh route network bedding crew, bedding passengers, inviting undercover female journalists to the flight deck and generally being a two timing love rat. Now obviously I've never watched an episode of this programme in my life but I think this would be a pretty good description of a Nigel type Captain. Whether the character was based on the Nigel phrase or if the phrase was coined from the character, I'm not sure.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Croker
They have been called Nigels much longer than that. The team that wrote that show, chose the name Nigel for the pilot because they knew this was the case.
It is a semi derogatory term dating back decades when many of the pilots were ex RAF and quite a few were actually called Nigel.
Over the years it has just become a term used to refer to pilots and is not really derogatory nowadays.