"Transmission interrupted." These words greeted the thousands of faithful readers who logged on to Petite Anglaise's blog in April 2006. The hastily typed message that followed did nothing to reassure them : "I will return. In a week or so. (Tapole [sic] and I are fine, please don't worry !)" And then, for two weeks, Petite Anglaise went silent. Her life Ñ and her blog Ñ between parentheses. Because of her online diary, petite anglaise.com, Catherine Sanderson was fired from Dixon Wilson, a British accountancy firm with offices in Paris, accused of blogging from work and disgracing the firm. But Petite Anglaise fought back, arguing at the prud'hommes, France's employment court, that she had written anonymously and had never identified her employers.

Last April, she won her case and received a year's salary, worldwide exposure and the promise of a new start. Once more, her blog had changed her life. Catherine Sanderson became Petite Anglaise in July 2004, after reading an article in The Guardian about Belle de Jour, the online diary of a supposed London call girl who became famous and struck a book deal. "I thought it was something I could try and do myself", she recalls. "I didn't want it to be the diary of a secretary, because that would be very boring. I thought that what people might find interesting about my life was the fact that I lived in Paris."

The blog's name was an easy find. Catherine, 34, grew up in Yorkshire and graduated