Victor Kermit Kiam II (December 7, 1926 – May 27, 2001) was an American entrepreneur and TV spokesman for Remington Products, and the owner of the New England Patriots football team from 1988–1991. He was well known for his turnaround of Remington's fortunes, as well as for his commercials written by his director of advertising and sales promotion at Benrus, Howard Shavelson, with whom he first worked on the Playtex Cross Your Heart Bra commercials. Biography Kiam was born in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the son of Nanon and Victor Kermit Kiam, a bond dealer who had divorced his actress mother while Kiam was four. His parents both moved away, with his mother going to California and his father to New York. He was educated by his maternal grandfather at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, where he was a classmate of future U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush. After serving in the U.S. Navy and attending Yale, the Sorbonne, and Harvard Business School, Kiam worked for Lever Brothers and Playtex as a salesman. He bought the Benrus Watch Company in 1968, selling his majority stake in 1977. He made a fortune as the President and CEO of Remington Products, which he famously purchased in 1979 after his wife bought him his first electric shaver. His purchase of Remington is considered an early example of a leveraged buyout. Remington, which had lost $30 million in the previous three years, made a profit in his first year as owner. Kiam became famous as the spokesman for the Remington shaver. His catchphrase, "I liked it so much, I bought the company", made him a household name. He recorded each commercial in the native language of the country in which it was broadcast. In the United Kingdom he became a celebrity, appearing on such television shows as Wogan, The Tube, and Through the Keyhole. He also owned other companies, including PIC Industrial Design and TravelSmart. In 1988, Kiam bought the NFL's New England Patriots from founder Billy Sullivan. The sale did not include Foxboro Stadium, which Sullivan lost in a bankruptcy sale to paper magnate Robert Kraft, and Kiam lost money on the deal. In 1990, Lisa Olson, a Boston Herald reporter, sued Kiam and the Patriots when Zeke Mowatt allegedly exposed himself and made lewd comments to her in the team change room. The incident stirred debate over female reporters in the