Cathy Sarraï - the death of the French Super Nanny

Tributes have been rolling in thick and fast after the death was announced on Wednesday of Cathy Sarraï.

Don't worry if you've never heard of her. The name - until this week - probably wasn't familiar to most French.

But her face was known to millions as she was the woman who shot to fame as the country's Super Nanny in the television programme of the same name.

Just hours after the announcement of her death, tributes sprung up all over the Net from those she had helped and others who had simply been moved by the programme in which she had appeared.

A rap group posted a hommage on YouTube and M6, the channel which broadcast the show in which Sarraï appeared, said it would be airing a special programme this coming weekend dedicated to her.



A reality TV programme based on the British equivalent and successfully exported around the world, the French version of Super Nanny began in 2005 and featured "Cathy" as she was better knwn helping parents cope with children who were "out of control".

With her trademark heavy-rimmed rectangular glasses, tailored black uniform and hair severely tied back in a bun, Sarraï could have seemed almost a caricature of the role she filled in first observing and then helping parents put in place a set or rules that would help them handle otherwise seemingly unmanageable children.

But read through many of the comments left on sites after the announcement of her death was made public, and it becomes clear that a lot of viewers, families she had helped and headline writers saw much more in the role she personified than a simple disciplinarian.

"A national icon" is how the weekly news magazine, L'Express, led its story. "Sadness on Twitter," reported the weekly celebrity magazine, Voici and radio broadcaster Jean-Marc Morandini devoted a portion of his morning show taking calls from listeners who wanted to pay tribute to her.

Born Kalthoum Sarraï in Tunis on September 25, 1962, Sarraï was one of seven children.

She was engaged at the age of 14, married at 16 and after arriving in France in 1979 gave birth to three children.

Sarraï did a number of odd jobs before qualifying as a professional child carer and obtaining a diploma and a nursery nurse assistant, which allowed her to become a nanny.

"Mine was something of an unusual path," she wrote in her autobiography, published in 2006.

"While in Tunis I lived in the heart of the family sheltered from everything and then I came to Paris and leapt into the unknown," she continued.

"In France I had to learn everything: the language, customs, my job."

Her big break came in 2005 when she was introduced to millions of television viewers as "Cathy" the nation's Super Nanny, a role she made her own over the next four years.

Cathy Sarraï died on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday aged 47 after a long battle against lung cancer.