Shill Game

Mays says he initially stank at his job. He spent too much time describing the product and not enough time "chilling 'em down," that is, getting the audience to pony up. Pitchmen are generally supercompetitive, but Mays seemed so sincere, helpless and dedicated that his colleagues gave him lessons. ("They said, 'Here's the baton, kid, we see something in you,' " as Mays remembers it.) One taught him a lengthy patter that always worked.

"You start by asking yourself a question: How much are these?" recalls Mays, switching to pitch mode. " 'I'm glad you asked. You can buy them in stores right now, for $29.99, and they come in this beautiful gift box. But before 12 o'clock today, the boss says I have 50 to sell at $15 apiece. But for the first 10 people, they cost one 10-dollar bill. Now, who is first?' And then you just point to the nearest guy, the guy who seemed most eager, and say, 'You are number one.' And that guy always went along with it. It was amazing. And then someone would raise their hand and say, 'I'm number two,' and pretty soon, you had 10 people handing you money."

After a few years with the WashMatik, Mays sold the Ultimate Chopper for five years, with a demonstration that ended with him making salsa. He traveled around the country to home shows and state fairs, "ballying," as the pitchman sales banter is known, at full volume for hours on end. Along the way, he met Max Appel, an inventor and pitchman who was selling Orange Glo, a wood-polishing liquid. When Appel asked Mays to pitch Orange Glo on the Home Shopping Network, 6,000 units were sold in 11 minutes, at $18 a pop.

"We would have sold more," says Mays, "but they ran out."

He moved to Florida, where HSN is based, and became an all-purpose sales guy for the channel. If a program wasn't making its numbers that day, a producer would call Mays, who'd drop whatever he was doing and bolt to the studio.

"Back then, it was 'Go out there and pitch, kid,' " says Mays. "I'd go for 18 straight minutes if they had enough product. I'd be selling $40,000 worth of mops in one day. In between, I'd sell a scooter. Then Wolfgang Puck would show up and I'd taste some of his creations."

Mays broke into his current superstar level of fame in 1999 when he did a two-minute commercial for the all-purpose Oxi Clean, which Appel had created. Something about the demonstration (Mays turning a bowl of brackish water a sudsy white) and the pitch ("Powered by the air you breathe, activated by the water you drink!") caught on. Appel would later sell his company, which included Oxi Clean and other products, for $325 million, and Mays became the most improbable of marketing phenoms: an infomercial star.

Mays is now famous in that decade-stamping way that ensures him a spot in future VH1 specials, unless he's already been on "I Love the New Millennium." We'll look back at the images of him hyping some miracle doodad and think, "Where is that guy!" The unofficial mascot of American capitalism at its noisiest, he's already become a Halloween costume -- just get a fake beard, blue shirt, a squirt bottle and start yelling -- and he's recognized whenever he goes out in public.

Like the time last year that he and his pal Anthony Sullivan went to the Delano hotel in Miami and spotted Motley Crue singer Vince Neil. Mays introduced himself. "Hey, my son loves your band," he said.

"And Neil looked at him and said, 'Dude, you're the Oxi Clean guy!' " remembers Sullivan. "The funny part about it was that Vince Neil was way more excited about meeting Billy than Billy was about meeting Vince Neil. It was like Billy was the rock star."