TV pitchman Billy Mays poses with some of his cleaning products in December 2002. He died Sunday. (Chris O'Meara/Associated Press)

Television pitchman Billy Mays suffered from hypertensive heart disease and likely died of a heart attack in his sleep, a medical examiner in Tampa, Fla., said Monday.

Mays, 50, the burly, bearded TV spokesperson for Orange Glo and OxiClean, was found dead on Sunday morning.

An autopsy performed Monday showed the wall of the left ventricle of Mays' heart and the wall of one of his arteries were enlarged.

"The heart disease is perfectly consistent with sudden death," said Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Vernard Adams.

An official cause of death will be issued after toxicology and other tests are completed in eight to 10 weeks. Mays was taking prescription painkillers for hip pain, but there was no indication of drug abuse, he added.

Mays' wife Deborah found him unresponsive in bed in their Tampa home Sunday morning and fire crews were unable to resuscitate him.

"While it provides some closure to learn that heart disease took Billy from us, it certainly doesn't ease the enormous void that his death has created in our lives," she said in a statement. "As you can imagine, we are all devastated."

There had been speculation his death might be linked to rough landing by a U.S. Airways flight on Saturday afternoon, in which Mays struck his head.

A TV crew interviewed Mays after he got off the plane and he spoke of being struck on the head when the plane touched down.

His wife said he had complained of feeling unwell Saturday evening before he went to bed. However, Adams said there was no evidence of head trauma.

'Such a sweet guy'

Mays, who said he loved his work, was king of the infomercials, shouting the benefits of cleaning products on the Home Shopping Channel and at trade shows.

"Billy was such a sweet guy, very lovable, very nice, always smiling, just a great, great guy," said Sarah Ellerstein who was a buyer for the Home Shopping Network in the 1990s.

"Everybody thinks because he's loud and boisterous on the air that that's the way he is, but I always found him to be a quiet, down-to-earth person."

Born William Mays in McKees Rocks, Pa., on July 20, 1958, Mays began as a pitchman on the Atlantic City boardwalk, demonstrating knives, mops and other "as seen on TV" gadgets.

In the mid-1990s, he met Max Appel, founder of Orange Glo International, which makes a line of environmentally friendly cleaning products, at a home show in Pittsburgh.

Appel recruited Mays for his TV advertising and he became a staple on the St. Petersburg-based Home Shopping Network.

Host of parodies

More TV ad contracts followed, including ads for Mighty Putty and the ESPN online service.

He was so ubiquitous and his style so distinctive that he spawned a host of parodies, especially online.

Mays also had a following, and his personal appearances were popular, with people lining up to get his autograph and discuss the merits of the products he pitched, all of which he vowed he used himself.

He recently helped develop a reality show, Pitchmen, on the Discovery Channel, in which he and his fellow pitchman Anthony Sullivan judged inventors' proposals for new products.

"One of the things that we hope to do with Pitchmen is to give people an appreciation of what we do," Mays told the Tampa Tribune in an interview in April. "I don't take on a product unless I believe in it. I use everything that I sell."

Mays is survived by his wife, a three-year-old daughter and a stepson in his 20s.

With files from The Associated Press