This weekend, for absolutely no reason at all, I started daydreaming about Victor Kiam. Kiam is one of a kind. He’s just about the only American entrepreneur… scratch that… he was the ONLY entrepreneur I’d heard of for a huge chunk of my life. Businessmen, y’see, switch me right off. They talk in garbled tongues about things that make my brain sink. They look constantly crabby and like they weigh everything up in terms of value. However, Kiam was different. When he appeared in those iconic adverts for Remington and uttered those immortal lines… “I liked it so much, I bought the company!” and “…or your money back!”, he seemed like a really cool, nice old guy. Where Barry Scott was a hired monkey, paid to shout Cilit Bang! as loudly as he could and Alan Sugar lurched creepily around that spot for Premium Bonds, Victor appeared in your set like he just happened to be passing. With that, I thought I’d do a little reading on him… and it turns out he was pretty unique!

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Victor Kiam wasn’t just an electric shaver vendor. He did loads of ace stuff… like buying the New England Patriots in ’88. Who wouldn’t want to own an NFL team? That’s hardcore. He was also down with Lever Brothers and Playtex, who gave us the weirdly iconic ‘cross your heart’ commercials, which I bet Kiam had a hand in.

However, it was his stint at Remington Products that brought him into our homes, with his Viennetta hair and easy-as-milk voice. And why did he get involved with Remington? Turns out his catchphrase was true.

His wife bought him a Remington electric shaver and so impressed was he, that he bought the whole damn company! Whaddaguy! When Kiam passed away in 2001, The Times quoted one of his closest business associates in later years, Jonathon Lyons, as saying that he was “a truly remarkable entrepreneur of the old kind – the kind they simply don’t make any more.”

Further proof of this is… and I only just found this out myself… is that Kiam recorded all the Remington adverts in the native language in which the advert was broadcast. How cool is that? No lame dubbing for him, he wanted to let everyone know he was a mellow guy. Check his amazing French accent in this spot:

Even cooler is that his middle name is Kermit. KERMIT! Victor Kermit Kiam didn’t just communicate with us through his wonderful slight-gravel vowels, but also, by understanding how we live our lives. In one commercial, Kiam appeared shaving wearing nothing but a towel. You just don’t get CEOs of multi-million dollar businesses getting their moobs out on telly.

To this day Kiam is one of the most iconic faces to ever appear on a television commercial, and here’s my own little cap doff. Kiam: I like him so much that I wrote an article about him.