CGU plc was a large insurance group, created by the merger of Commercial Union and General Accident. The Company was listed on the London Stock Exchange.

History[link]

The Company was created by the 1998 merger of Commercial Union and General Accident.^[1]

Commercial Union[link]

Commercial Union was established following a conflagration in London's dockland in 1861, known as the Great Tooley Street Fire, which destroyed a number of warehouses and wharves along the River Thames as a result of which the fire insurance companies were hit by a series of massive claims. Consequently they increased their fire insurance rates so dramatically that a group of local merchants and brokers decided to form their own company. This became known as the Commercial Union Assurance Company Ltd.^[1]

It purchased the Hand in Hand Fire & Life Insurance Society, the world's oldest fire insurance company, in 1905^[1] and the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation Ltd. in 1910 and it continued to grow by further acquisitions.^[2]

General Accident[link]

General Accident was a financial services firm formed by several mergers and acquisitions over several years. the General Accident and Employers' Liability Assurance Association Ltd. was founded in Perth, Scotland in 1885. It became the General Accident Assurance Corporation Ltd. in 1891.^[3]

General Accident acquired Yorkshire Insurance Company Ltd. in 1967. All general insurance business was relocated to Perth, with York becoming the centre for the new firm's life assurance and pensions business.^[1]

General Accident acquired Stevenage-based Provident Mutual Life Assurance Association in 1995, merging it with the GA Life and Pensions business as Provident Mutual Life Assurance Ltd. York became the centre of all life assurance business and Stevenage of all pensions business.^[1]

Norwich Union merger[link]

The Company merged with Norwich Union in 2000 to form CGNU plc, later renamed Aviva plc.^[4]

In the US, the CGU casualty and property businesses were purchased by White Mountains Insurance Group; the name of the Company has since changed to OneBeacon Insurance Company.^[5]

References[link]

Look up PLC or plc in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

PLC or plc may refer to:

Business[link]

• Public limited company, a type of limited company whose shares may be sold to the public
• Program length commercial, or infomercial
• Product life cycle, the succession of stages a product goes through
• Personal Line of Credit, credit extended by a financial institution to a customer
• Preferential Location Charges, PLC Charges for house plots which are 2/3 sides open/ Facing North/ wide Road etc.

Education[link]

• Performance Learning Centre, one element of the Communities In Schools education network
• Presidents Leadership Class, a leadership institution for undergraduates at the University of Colorado at Boulder
• Platoon Leaders Class, a summer training program for college students given by the Officer Candidates School of the United States Marine Corps
• Presbyterian Ladies' College (disambiguation), the name or former name of several independent girls' schools in Australia, affiliated with either the Presbyterian Church of Australia or the Uniting Church in Australia
• Professional learning community, a movement in the education field of teachers sharing with teachers to improve learning among their students
• Pymble Ladies' College, an independent, non-selective, day and boarding school for girls, located in Pymble, a suburb in the North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• Post Leaving Certificate, is an informal term describing a large range of courses and qualifications run in Ireland for students who have finished their secondary education

Medicine and psychology[link]

• Peter Lougheed Centre, a hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Pityriasis lichenoides chronica, the chronic version of the immune system disease Pityriasis lichenoides et varioliformis acuta
• Phospholipase C, an enzyme which cleaves PI(4,5)P2 to form IP3 and diacylglycerol
• Pathological Laughing and Crying, a disorder of emotional expression due to brain conditions, distinct from normal emotional cause and effect
• Posterolateral Corner, a region of the human knee

Politics[link]

Science and technology[link]

• Packet Loss Concealment, a technique to mask the effects of missing packets in VoIP communications
• Polymorphic Lambda Calculus, a typed lambda calculus with parametric polymorphism, also known as System F
• Portevin–Le Chatelier effect, the serrated portion of a stress strain curve
• Power line communication, including broadband PLC modes
• Programmable logic controller, a digital computer used for automation of industrial processes, such as machinery control in factories

Other uses[link]

• Pigmy Love Circus, a Los Angeles-based rock band
• Pine Lake Camp, a Salvation Army camp in Alberta, Canada
• Plastic
• Psycho le Cému, a Japanese visual kei rock band
• Pet Lovers Club
• Plafond Limité de Classement, the maximum allowed yield for wine producer that French wine regulating body (Institut National des Appellations d’Origine) establishes

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

John Noel William "Sam" Newman (born 22 December 1945) is a retired Australian rules football player and current television personality. He is a featured presenter on the AFL version of The Footy Show.

VFL career[link]

Recruited straight from school, Newman made his debut for Geelong in 1964 and was fortunate to have Graham "Polly" Farmer in the side as a role model. During the first semi-final against Collingwood in 1967, Newman suffered a serious injury which forced surgeons to remove part of his kidney, but he bounced back to win his club's "best and fairest" award in 1968 and 1975. He was also selected as an All-Australian player in 1969 and played for the Victorian State team eight times. Newman retired in 1980, having polled 100 Brownlow Medal votes throughout his career. In 2002, he was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

After retirement[link]

In December 2005, Newman was appointed as ruck coach for the Melbourne Football Club to mentor players such as Jeff White, Mark Jamar and Paul Johnson.

On 6 July 2010, Newman made a comeback playing for Victoria in the annual EJ Whitten Legends Game. Newman kicked four goals from four kicks and three marks to be named best on ground, despite his team losing to the All Stars by seven points.

Media career[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2009)

Newman joined radio station 3AW as a football commentator in 1981 and appeared on World of Sport on Channel 7 for seven years.

Newman has been a regular on the AFL version of The Footy Show since it first aired in 1994 on the Australian Nine Network. He acts as sidekick and resident clown. He regularly hosts "Street Talk", a vox populi segment in which he interviews people on the streets, usually in Melbourne, as well as Sam's Mailbag where he reads out random correspondence, shows funny footage and the occasional humorous lookalike of Garry Lyon (co-host).

His other media appearances have included the Sunday sports show Any Given Sunday in 2005, World of Sport, The Sunday Footy Show and also co-hosting the short lived Sam and The Fatman with Paul "Fatty" Vautin. On radio station Triple M, Newman previews Friday night and Saturday afternoon matches. He formerly provided special comments during AFL games on Triple M, as well as 3AW previously.

From April 2010, he was a part of the MTR (Melbourne Talk Radio) lineup, providing opinion and participating in talkback between 9.00am and 9.30am, during the Steve Price breakfast programme. Newman quit the station in January 2012, after the breakfast producer censored Newman's profanity.^[2]

Personal life[link]

Newman attended Geelong Grammar.^[3] His father's aim for him was to become a barrister. His mother and two older sisters prefer to call him by his birth name of John.^[4]

Newman's former house built in St Kilda, featuring an image of Pamela Anderson's face

He has been married three times and has three sons, aged 11, 26 and 30 (as of March 2009).^[5]

Newman currently lives in an apartment in Melbourne's Docklands^[6] where he also berths a luxury yacht. He also owns four vintage cars and a warehouse.^[7]

Motor sport[link]

Newman took up motor racing in the GT Production Car class in the late 1990s ^[8] and subsequently competed in the Australian Nations Cup Championship in Lamborghinis and Ferraris. He also competed in the Mini Challenge series at the 2010 Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park. This was a one off drive in the series.

Controversy[link]

Newman has been involved in several incidents of public controversy.^[9] Reports indicate that Newman is deliberately controversial, and that his on-air persona is nothing like his true self.^[10] Particular incidents include:

• 1997 – Newman's 25 year old girlfriend, Leonie Jones, drove his own car into him outside his house, breaking his leg and an ankle.^[11]
• 1999 – On The Footy Show Newman blacked up his face to impersonate indigenous footballer Nicky Winmar, at a time when racial vilification charges were being levelled at certain AFL players.^[12]
• 2005 – A female fan broke a window whilst trying to break in to his Brighton house.^[11]
• 2008 – Mocking television personality and The Age writer Caroline Wilson regarding how she was dressed on Footy Classified three days earlier by bringing a mannequin model onto stage and stapling a cardboard cut-out of Wilson on the face of the model and 'experimenting' with different outfits. Newman then recklessly moved the model about.^[13] Wilson brought the issue up on Footy Classified the following Monday, telling of her disappointment to Newman's co-star Garry Lyon.^[14]
• 2008 - Joking that attractive Tasmanian MP Paul Wriedt was "Worth coming on her", after an interview featuring Ms Wriedt was aired on The Footy Show.
• 2009 – The Nine Network and Newman were sued for defamation by a female board member of the Western Bulldogs football team after he said on air that she was a "liar" and "hypocrite". They settled for $220,000 plus costs.^[15]
• 2009 – 17 September. During the Footy Show broadcast Newman likened a Malaysian man to a monkey, being "not long out of the forest". The Australian Communications and Media Authority ruled Newman was likely to have "provoked severe ridicule on the basis of the man's colour and race". Newman's employer channel Nine has offered to donate $200,000 to charity in the event of any future code breach and had "agreed to a number of other provisions in the enforceable undertaking, including significant senior management overview of the materials to be used by Mr Newman and a broad-ranging reporting regime and training obligation".^[16]
• 2010 – 30 June. Newman was criticised for disrespect to Aboriginal beliefs when he revealed on a radio show that he had hit a golf ball off the summit of Uluru.^[17]

Cancer diagnosis[link]

On 5 March 2008 it was revealed that Newman was in hospital, undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.^[18][19] On 6 March he underwent a procedure at Epworth Hospital in Melbourne to have the cancerous prostate removed. Newman asked that television cameras from Channel Nine's program 60 Minutes have full access to the procedure, as he believed it could help raise awareness of the issue amongst the greater public. Channel Nine personality and close friend Eddie McGuire covered the story for the program.

The program went to air on 9 March 2008. It contained footage filmed earlier that day in which Newman's urologist, Laurence Harewood, told him that the operation had been a success and that he had been cleared of the cancer. Newman had since made a full recovery.^[20]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Player profile on the official AFL website of the Geelong Football Club
• Player bio at Full Points Footy
• AFL statistics
• Sam Newman's statistics from AFL Tables
• Sam Newman at the Internet Movie Database
• The Footy Show AFL official website

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (March 2010)

Dylan Lewis (aka Dirk Vile) (born 1973) is an Australian television and radio personality.

Dylan Lewis

Personal life[link]

He was educated at Caulfield Grammar School, graduating in 1990, and studied for a Bachelor of Education in Drama and Music degree at the University of Melbourne. John Bannon, former South Australian premier is Dylan's stepfather.^[1] He and his partner have a daughter.

Career[link]

Television[link]

Lewis has had roles hosting and presenting on numerous Australian music programs, and quickly shot to cult fame on ABC TV’s national Saturday morning live music show including Recovery for 3 years. The year 2000 saw Dylan presenting the national television program The 10:30 Slot and Pepsi Live, a music chart television program.

He won Celebrity Big Brother Australia in 2002 and was a contestant on Celebrity Circus in 2005.^[2] Lewis was also the vocalist for an eclectic funk/alternative rock band called The Brown Hornet and later had a hip-hop project under the name Megabias. Lewis has had parts in Australian films The Real Thing (2002) and has played the lead role in three short films, Like It Is, Ray (2004) and The Postman (2007).^[2] In 2010 he was appointed host of Video Hits on Network Ten.

Radio[link]

In September 2006, Lewis signed with Nova 100 in Melbourne he is now doing the afternoon shift (1pm - 4pm). He has prior experience as a radio announcer, having done stints for the Austereo Network and Triple J.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Dylan Lewis at the Internet Movie Database
• Dylan Lewis Interview
• Dylan Lewis at Nova 100