Almost 35 years on from its premiere, the girls from ‘Prisoner’ are still breaking records, if not the occasional face. Known to many in Oz as ‘Prisoner’, family in the UK report it was called ‘Cell Block H’. Either way it became a cult classic, because chicks being bad in jail in Australia in the 80s was always going to do that.

And with a new version called ‘Wentworth’ screening, it’s time to report on some family goings on ‘back in the day’.

Aunty Beads says: “I was living in London at the time and was stunned to discover that Prisoner (renamed Prisoner Cell Block H) had a cult-status following amongst my darling friends in the gay community. I was completely mortified! There were many evenings gathered around the TV, on a cold winter’s night, gallons of red wine and lots of shuuuuushing…..and fussing about to get settled before Lizzy and Bea got their game on!”

Meanwhile back in Oz, I (Aunty Mod) would watch with long suffering brothers Tyrone and Paul. Our mother (Queen Mary) had told us we were not allowed to watch it. The sight of grown women slamming each others hands, heads or other body parts, under the steam iron must have been too much for her. Or it may have been that we once called her Lizzy Birdworth. Not happy at all.

To get around the ban we took to watching and posting a look out. Idea was that the look-out would warn us if Queen Mary was getting too close. The warning came too slow one evening.

“The wardens comin!” Paul screamed from the hallway. Tige (Tyrone) and I leapt to our feet, knocked over our red lemonade (we lived in a pub) and didn’t make it to the tele (no remotes then) to change channels before the Warden entered the room. Queen Mary (the Warden) had flames exploding from her ears. Paul had come in behind her and peeped at us behind her skirt. “What did they do?” Paul asked mum sweetly (like he wasn’t on the Prisoner team!).

So that was the end of Prisoner in our house/pub for many a long year.

Aunties Lush, Verve and Darling never got the bug they said. I was excited to see the new show ‘Wentworth’ and hit twitter during the first ep, but it had been changed, changed too much… It was too good! Welcome Back Queen Bea.

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