Filters, fillers and fierce honesty: Dimplestilskin the Mullingar comedienne with almost 400,000 followers

Eilís Ryan

It still surprises Dympna Little that sometimes, while simply going about her business, strangers will come up to her – usually delightedly – saying “I love what you do”.

How they know what she does is because she does it before an impressively large audience: under the alias “Dimplestilskin” the Mullingar comedienne has over a quarter of a million followers on Instagram, with close on a further 100,000 on Tiktok.

It’s now about four years since Dympna started putting out content, and in that time, she has amassed millions of views, drawing audiences not just in this country but as far away as Australia and America.

“Not so much outside the English-speaking world,” she laughs. “Although there was one that went viral in Germany, so I had to keep pressing ‘Translate’ on all the comments.”

Her material is genuinely funny – though not in a conventional punchline-and-setup way. Instead, she trades in sharply observed moments: random thoughts that make audiences think, “Yes – that happens to me too.”

She creates miniature two-hander dramas, playing both parts herself. She takes on the trolls who pepper her comment section with what she elects to write off as the evidence of their own insecurity.

Dympna’s quirky sketches, her occasionally blunt-but-true monologues are sometimes uncomfortable because they can be on what would traditionally be considered “sensitive” topics – particularly around the death in December 2024 of her much-loved and greatly-missed mother, Lily.

“I have a very dark sense of humour,” Dympna admits. But then again, anyone who was following the Dimplestilskin account during those heart-wrenching times knows that Lily herself was a willing participant in the skits – and indeed Lily was greatly touched by the messages of support, the promises of prayers, and the candles lit for her by Dympna’s followers.

A running joke between mother and daughter was that Lily was to leave “signs” for Dympna after she was gone – but nothing conventional like butterflies or white feathers: “I said just leave cold hard €50s on the ground and I’ll know it’s you.”

Surprisingly, Dympna has found a few €50s since then – one of which particularly stands out in her memory: “So I did a performance at Electric Picnic last year, and I was kind of wasn’t in a great place: I was still grieving, and I found it very hard to go on and do it, but I did it. Before I went on, I said, ‘please Mam, help me with this’. And then when I did it, it worked out great.

“I just said as I was coming off the stage, ‘thanks so much for that Mam, thanks for helping me’.

“And then I kind of left the crowd and I went to be on my own for a while, and as I was walking through the car park, I found a €50 note on the ground – so I said, ‘thanks Mammy!’.”

The family is close, and Lily’s loss cut them all deeply, Dympna’s siblings Deirdre, Laura and Derek who all still live locally, and Dympna’s dad, Noel – a man who holds a very high place in the affections of his grandchildren – for whom the death represented the loss of his wife of fifty years.

Dympna took leave of absence from her job as a dental nurse in Meath to care for her mother, and right through those gut-wrenching days of Lily’s decline, as cancer raged its nine-month invasion of her weakening body, Dympna found herself disappointed and angered as she discovered what she believes is the exploitation of cancer patients in need of wigs. She is now campaigning for a change in the system, so that the grant for wigs available to cancer patients is paid to the patients themselves, and not the wig suppliers. (See separate panel).

In just the last few weeks, Dympna has joined forces with another great midland comedic talent, Laois woman Mary-Claire Fitzpatrick, and they have launched a podcast, “Herself and Herself”.

“It was GoLoud media who suggested I do a podcast, but I said no. And then they came back to me and said would I do it with Mary Claire, so eventually, I said I’d give it a go. I knew her, but not very well, and I loved her stuff. (Did you know she has a law degree?)”

The law degree has become a running gag. In episode two, Mary Claire repeatedly referenced the qualification – joking about the parents who paid for boarding school and university, only to watch her now make a living doing skits about her father and farm life.

Dympna, a past pupil of St Colman’s and Loreto College, holds a science degree from TUS herself.

Both women share a deep affection for their parents. Dympna grew up first in Crookedwood and later in Mullingar in what she describes as a happy home.

Of Lily, she says: “Her kids were her life. She liked her style. She was kind and religious. She never talked bad about anyone. She wouldn’t curse. She was just a really lovely kind Irish mammy and she was a good friend to people. And she was funny. She didn’t take life too seriously. I feel very blessed. I got really lucky.”

Her father, too, is a steady presence.

“He’s always checking in – ‘Are you okay for everything? Do you need money?’ He’s a very funny man himself. He’s shown unbelievable strength. We lost our mother – but he lost his wife. He knew her long before we came along.”

Humour is a hallmark of the family – and that funny gene has been passed on to Dympna’s son, Alex Little (21). “In fact I wish I was as funny as he is,” she jokes.

That easy wit means that incredibly, Dympna doesn’t write her scripts before filming, and she actually films all her clips in one take. She holds up her mobile phone to give an impromptu demonstration of how she does the videos in which she plays more than one character.

“I don’t spend too long thinking of ideas. I could be just sitting there and I’ll have an idea, and just pick up the phone straight away,” she says.

The trolls don’t bother her. Not even slightly. She doesn’t see them as relevant to her story – and in fact, when she was being slagged off for lip filler – even though she had already been considering having it dissolved – she delayed the procedure rather than allow critics to think she had acted because of them.

Dympna and Mary-Claire admit that their sense of humour is sometimes self-deprecating, and it is in this style that she has shared the story of her cosmetic surgery journey. Although undeniably attractive, she is reluctant to accept the compliments without replying with the qualifier: “I had to go to Turkey and I use a heap of filters to look like this!” she says.

What began as an enquiry about blepharoplasty for hooded eyes escalated quickly.

“They asked me to send a picture of my face. Then they texted back: ‘What’s the story with your chin?’ And I said: ‘What do you mean?’”

By the end of the exchange, four procedures had been agreed.”That was on a Wednesday. I was on the operating table on Friday. I didn’t even have the money – I had to take out a loan.”

Despite her substantial online following, social media is not the financial goldmine many assume. The TikTok Creator Fund does not currently pay Irish creators, which is why so many promote products for commission.

Dympna has little time for or interest in the world of influencing or influencers. Despite her huge following, she is completely down to earth and true to herself – and still prone to being startled when she realises strangers recognise her.