Ending a difficult week with the deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson, Informerical and Commercial personality Billy Mays was found unresponsive in his home yesterday and later died. The spokesperson for many products over the years including OxiClean and OrangeGlo, and most recently the co-star of his own reality television show on Discovery channel called Pitchmen, was 50 years old.
The cause of Mays death is unknown and an autopsy is expected to be released sometime Monday afternoon. Last week Mays appeared on The Tonight Show with his Pitchmen co-star Anthony Sullivan and appeared to be fine. There were no signs of of a break-in at the home, and police said that foul play had been ruled out. Mays had been a passenger on a USAirways flight that landed in Tampa Bay on Saturday that blew a tire causing a bumpy landing. Billy Mays spoke with local Tampa station KTVT-TV about the incident on Saturday saying, "“All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping,” MyFox Tampa Bay quoted him as saying. “It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head.”
Later Saturday evening he complained to his wife that he didn't feel well before going to bed. She found him the next morning at 7:45 am unresponsive. A Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said linking Mays’ death to the landing would “purely be speculation.” She said Mays’ family members didn’t report any health issues with the pitchman, but said he was due to have hip replacement surgery in coming weeks.
Below is the Tonight Show appearance with Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan on June 23, 2009.
