I was lucky as at the time of launch, I had a friend (Graham) who worked for a British hi-fi company called Laskys who were located on the ground floor of Nottingham's council house building (having moved from the Victoria Centre). I was in the store when Philips launched their CD100 player.
It all got a bonkers when the Philips reps began demonstrating the robustness of the technology by inviting people to write on the surface of the discs and pour liquid over them. I remember seeing a bloke standing on one of the discs and spinning around on it, and to everyone's amazement including the Philips reps, it played... A few minutes later he bought the first player of the day, most probably the first player in Nottinghamshire!
It was around a year later when I bought my first CD player, the Philips CD101...