American pitchman Billy Mays dies at age 50

Sunday, June 28, 2009

American pitchman and advertiser Billy Mays has died at the age of 50. Mays was probably most known for his pitching of the multipurpose cleaning product OxiClean.

According to reports, Mays' wife, Deborah, found him unresponsive Sunday morning in their home located in Tampa, Florida. Fire-rescue crews pronounced him dead at 7:45am EDT. The cause of death was heart disease.

According to reports, he was a passenger on U.S. Airways Flight 1241, a flight to Tampa from Philadelphia, that suffered a tire blowout upon landing on Saturday night. He was quoted as saying objects from the overhead compartments hit him in the head, but he did not seek medical treatment. Nobody was reported injured in the incident. Deborah said he did not feel well when he went to bed at around 10:00pm EDT the previous night.

An autopsy is expected to be completed by Monday afternoon.

"Although Billy lived a public life, we don't anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days. Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times," said Deborah Mays in a statement to the press.

Mays recently began co-starring in a television show on the Discovery Channel called Pitchmen. Mays, along with English advertiser Anthony Sullivan starred in the show where they would 'pitch' several products. By the end of the show, two inventors would be selected and be given a chance at selling their product "en masse".

Mays also pitched sales for several other products including furniture polish Orange Glo, Mighty Putty, the Gopher, Zorbeez, and the cleaning product Kaboom!.

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Sources

Learn more about Billy Mays and Pitchmen on Wikipedia.

Michael Muskal. "Billy Mays' autopsy shows he died of heart disease, coroner says" — Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2009
"Report: 'Infomercial King' Billy Mays Found Dead in Home" — Fox News Channel, June 28, 2009
Associated Press. "Billy Mays dies at 50; boisterous TV pitchman" — Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2009
Drew Harwell. "TV pitchman Billy Mays found dead in Tampa home" — St. Petersburg Times, June 28, 2009

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Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.