A photograph of Neil in a vest and baseball cap, embracing a much younger woman, ran over several editions of satirical magazine Private Eye, after it became known that he found the picture embarrassing. This still surfaces regularly. A long-running joke within the letters page is that a reader will ask the editor if he has any photographs related to some topic in the news, but by unfortunate double entendre it can be construed as a request for this photo, which is duly published alongside the letter. The photograph is of a woman with whom Neil was briefly involved while in the United States in the early nineties and is frequently accompanied in the paper by references to the woman's ethnicity. Neil has found "fascinating" what he sees as an example of "public school racism" on the part of the Eye's editorial staff.
The magazine nicknamed him Brillo, after his wiry hair which is seen as bearing a resemblance to a form of kitchen scouring pad. In addition, it often misspells his surname with an extra L, in reference to Neil's relationship with Pamella Bordes, whose name is written with two Ls.
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