Actually, he still has a monotone sales pitch. It’s just that ever since he stopped being Bill Mays and became the commercial character who goes by “Billy Mays!” -- a metamorphosis that began sometime in the mid-1980s on New Jersey’s Atlantic City Boardwalk and concluded when he landed the pitchman job for OxiClean stain remover -- his tone has gotten much, much louder. And more profitable. Mays’s high-powered promotional skills have helped sell millions of products, including Mighty Putty, the Big City Slider Station, and OxiClean. For the most part, these are relatively inexpensive products or, as Mays puts it in one ad, “A huge value! All for just two payments of $19.99!” Still, thousands and thousands of products sold at one or two payments of $19.99 aggregate. Mays does, after all, drive a Bentley.

He is also now legitimately famous. He stars in his own reality TV series, the Discovery Channel’s Pitchmen, alongside producer and fellow pitchman Anthony “Sully” Sullivan. Combined, Sullivan and Mays racked up 56,000 minutes of TV airtime last year in commercials alone, according to Icon Media. But Mays’s style is not universally admired. More than a few people mute their TV sets every time they hear “Hi, Billy Mays here!”

“If he sold air,” wrote a commenter in one of many online forums dedicated to the pillory of Billy Mays, “I think I’d suffocate.” Such reactions, coupled perhaps with their own tinge of jealousy, is why some Madison Avenue suits dismiss Mays as a passing fad.

But Mays doesn’t think his days as the nation’s preeminent pitchman are over. (Wait, there’s more!) Not only does he plan on sticking around, he says he’s about to embark on bigger, better things. And you better act now, because he’s ready to sell. “It’s about giving back,” he says. “There’s a bigger calling for Billy Mays.”