Drawing on the concept of sociolinguistic scales, this paper discusses how the position of the Irish language in current Irish society has been reconfigured via its accrued presence in performative genres like comedy and rap music. The main goal of this paper is to explore the field of Irish-language comedy, yielded by the Irish-American comedian Des Bishop in his television series labelled 'In the Name of the Fada' and in his ensuing stand-up comedy show 'Tongues', in terms of bottom-up language maintenance and planning.