‘Laughter the best medicine’
Two Mullingar comediennes performed on stage at this year’s Electric Picnic and featured on RTÉ Radio 1’s Louise Duffy Show – cancer survivor Mary Healy from Ballinderry, and online star Dympna Little, aka Dimplestilskin, who has 240,000 followers on Instagram.
Laughter is said to be the best medicine and as a former nurse, Mary ably administered generous dollops of hilarious humour when interviewed this week by the Westmeath Examiner. She spoke of her battle with cancer, her career as a nurse for 44 years, and her chance meeting with Marty Mulligan from Mullingar, who manages the MindField events at Electric Picnic, as well as being an author, poet and sometimes singer.
Mary and her husband Pearse Murphy, who is originally from the Green Road, Mullingar, celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary this year. They were on their way to Málaga, Spain, when they met Marty on the airport bus. “I said to him, you’re missing a trick in your tent and that is the humour of the older woman.”
“He said, ‘okay, I will put you on the Sunday evening at 20 to seven for 10 minutes’, and I didn’t sleep a wink for the 10 wet days in Málaga,” Mary laughed.
Mary had worked with Deirdre Little in St Loman’s Hospital, Mullingar, and she asked Deirdre if her sister Dympna would do the gig with her.
“Dympna is mostly on TikTok and has 240,000 followers on Instagram. When we went to the Forest Fest in Emo, honestly it was non-stop people getting selfies with her. She has a lot of good sketches, especially around her mother Lily dying – Lily loved her sketches,” Mary said. Following their performance at EP, Mary and Dympna were interviewed by Louise Duffy for RTÉ Radio 1.
Louise told Mary, ‘you are a great example of taking a shot’, to which Mary replied that she enjoys doing different things.
“I have been volunteering at EP for the last few years, working in the car park, but my ADHD and car parking didn’t go well, and I was demoted,” she told listeners. Her “demotion” took her to the MindField tent and a performance that drew lots of laughs.
Mary grew up in Gaybrook, Mullingar. Her mother Rose loved a joke and a riddle and comedy in general, Brendan Grace in particular. Mary’s sister Judy, who lives in California, is “a terrific mimic”.
“We grew up in that atmosphere, always having a joke,” she said.
Pearse and Mary “met in the County Hall at Joe Dolan” in 1975, when Mary was in Junior Cert. “I had a Kerry boyfriend who broke it off with me because there wasn’t enough in my Post Office account,” she laughed. She kept her maiden name when she married because, when she started nursing in Crumlin Children’s Hospital in the 1980s, there were 12 Mary Murphys, and she refused to go “double barrel”.
Pearse and Mary have two daughters – Sinéad, who works as a social worker in Mullingar, specialising in patients with dementia, and Ciara, a teacher in the Gaelscoil in Edenderry, having previously worked for five years as a social worker too.
Pearse is now retired, having worked as head of Nursing and Health Science in TUS, Athlone. Despite having worked for 44 years as a nurse and midwife, Mary said she never dreamed she had ovarian cancer when she began to experience bowel and urinary problems in late 2019.
She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2020, just as Covid hit, and so her diagnosis was overshadowed by the global pandemic – “there was a lack of sympathy and no party”, she joked.
Mary now works three days a week as a volunteer in the Enable Ireland charity shop in Mullingar, and she does Airbnb. She is looking forward to travelling more and to recording her travels in her blogs, so watch out for @catgranee.
Last year the couple headed off to Thailand for three months “because Pearse won’t turn the heating on, and to avoid Christmas”, Mary chuckled.
“It was the best fun and I did a few blogs on it. Now I have my own Instagram account (@catgranee) and I’m going to do TikTok too,” Mary said.
The two are heading to Singapore next: “Pearse says it’s supposed to be the most gorgeous airport in the world!”