The earliest memory of watching it was when I was still going to school, it could've been any time from '88 to '91, so my age would've been anything from 12 to 15, it was on Granada and they used to show it at around 11pm on Sundays, Mondays, and Fridays I think.
The episode was where the women were doing a play and then they tried escaping through a tunnel, I think this may have been the first episode I ever saw. I'm not sure exactly what I thought of it, I think that I thought that it was 'okay'.
So if I wasn't hooked at the start I did eventually become hooked.
I think the continuity announcers usually made jokes about it, and said things like 'And now it's time to return to those shaky sets in Wentworth prison'
I have a lot of memories of coming home on a Friday night drunk and watching Prisoner at around 11pm seeing two of everything.