WATCH: Limerick great-grandmother is a TikTok star at age 87

A GREAT-GRANDMOTHER from Limerick is moving in the same TikTok circles as Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran as one of her videos has been played over 1.5 million times on the social media app.

Dorothy Isobel Teskey, aged 87, has struck a chord with the users of the popular short-form video hosting service with a song dedicated to everyone who has lost their grandmother.

Ms Teskey, who only learned to play the guitar last year, sings and strums the song Remember me and Smile.

“TikTok - that was a mistake!” laughs Ms Teskey down the phone from her home in Adare.

“I recorded a song in my living room on my iPhone for people who have lost their grandmother. I sent it on to my granddaughter, Karen, in Berlin and the next thing I know I am on TikTok. She is the cause of all the trouble!” jokes Ms Teskey, who was born and raised on the North Circular Road in the city.

Karen told her grandmother how to download TikTok on her iPhone but little did they know that the song would touch over 1.5 million people and counting.

“I remember talking to my friend Elizabeth a month or so later and I said to her laughingly, ‘You’ll never guess but i’m on TikTok’. She said, ‘What’s your name on TikTok?’. A few minutes later she phoned me back and said, ‘Do you realise you have over one million views?’ and I said to her, ‘Pull the other one!’”

The song has garnered over 300,000 likes and approaching 7,000 comments. One that captures how the song touched people is: “My nana passed away last month, her name was Dorothy. I miss her so much. Thank you.”

Ms Teskey, wife of the late Ronald, has been a singer since she was a child and has been a member of numerous church choirs but learning the guitar came later in life.

“I asked my friends Gerry and Elizabeth Moore for a guitar. We were still in Covid, locked down, couldn’t go out, so I had to do something. I learnt the guitar from YouTube. You have to play every day to harden up your fingers.

"If you know three chords - C, F and G - that will get you every song,” said Ms Teskey, who has two children Shirley and Stephen, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The inspirational lady said learning the guitar and embracing technology keeps her young.

“You have to be a little bit of a terrier. I hate something to best me. I keep at it until I find the answer. I might fail, I don’t know how many times, but I keep trying. It also keeps your mind active and keeps you young,” smiles Ms Teskey.