A Saundersfoot hotel's destruction in a gas explosion in the 1980s is recalled in a new book by West Wales broadcaster Ron Lewis.

Ron, a television journalist for 34 years, remembers rushing to the Cambrian Hotel on the resort's sea front, reporting for both HTV Wales and Independent Television News. He found the police refusing to allow journalists within sight of the damaged building.

"The police were being awkward," said Ron. "Luckily for me, our Pembrokeshire cameraman Gordon Mackenzie Bennett was on hand. He knew the local police superintendent and arranged, in a common sense way, for the media to be allowed nearer the aftermath of the blast."

Ron also recalls hiring a fishing boat to cover an oil tanker disaster which threatened the Pembrokeshire coast in 1978.

"Millions of gallons of crude oil spilled from the Christos Betos, devastating wildlife and threatening important bird sanctuaries. One of the biggest problems for my film crew and me was fighting sea sickness!"

Ron looks back at his time as a young reporter and scriptwriter in 'Men from the Adverts Telly', an insider's account of the Golden Age of Independent Television. It's a personal collection of anecdotes described by top literary agent James Gill as "intriguing and hair-raising stuff - Life on Mars meets Drop the Dead Donkey." The book is dedicated to the memory of some of Ron's friends and colleagues, including the late Denzil Griffiths, Mayor of Tenby.

A journalist with 42 years' experience in newspapers and television, Ron returns to a vanished era of "film, fun, passion and unquenchable thirst." He says the 1970s and early '80s was a time of "greedy bosses, bolshie unions, hell-raising hacks and grasping politicians."

"In those days an ITV franchise really was a licence to print money, " he said. "We had millionaire owners, stroppy shop stewards and even a cleaner who saved the hardest toilet paper for the rear of the chief executive."

Unusually, for such a retro offering, 'Men from the Adverts Telly' is being released first as an e-book. Details on how to download are on Ron's website at tinyurl.com/advertstelly?