Das comedian

They write routines involving funny walks; they plays to arenas; they are household names in their own countries; their style is eminently accessible and they are both called Michael. There’s quite a lot of similarities between Michael McIntyre and German comedian Michael Mittermeier.

However, Mittermeier started his career playing guitar and doing sketches on the left wing “kabarett” circuit, before forging a more mainstream, observational circuit. He also looks like Greg Kinnear, so the similarities do end.

I meet the comic on a short trip to London during which he's reuniting with the formerly-imprisoned Burmese comedian Maung Thura "Zarganar," who was at the centre of Amnesty International's 2010 Edinburgh festival campaign. Mittermeier celebrated Zarganar’s long battle against Burma’s repressive regime when he teamed up with documentary director Rex Bloomstein to create the film This Prison I Live. 

Mittermeier was both an on and off screen presence in the film, sometimes in ways that he could not have imagined. “We wanted to film the prison Zarganar was in, but it's against the law to film official buildings in Burma. So someone had the idea I would drive around it on a motorcycle, wearing a helmet and concealing a camera. It was a shitty idea,” he says smiling, “but I did it.”

During the 46 year-old's flying visit he is due to pop in to the Comedy Store to do a spot. Won't it be weird swapping stadiums in Germany for a small prefab hut in Edinburgh?

“It won’t be weird for me,” he says in his tone of almost constant enthusiasm. “I never compare the two. Sometimes in Germany I do a club tour and go back to places that I last performed at 15-20 years ago. What concerns me more is trying to make 100 percent of the room laugh, whether it is an arena or a club.”

Already used to doing two hours in the larger venues he plays, Mittermeier says his problem will be honing down his material to fit the hour, though any material he directly translates often gets whittled down. “When I am writing an English language show, I translate, I write new routines, and mix up old ones. Sometimes when I look at two page routines I think ‘yeah, I can do this in five lines in the UK.'"

“You have to translate yourself, my style, not just your routines” he adds, but recognises that things don’t travel easily. “I have this routine about tattoos on a bottom, roughly translating to “ass antlers”. It is one of the funniest things I have ever done, but it has never really worked outside of Germany. I will keep on this routine because I love it and I will perform it up to the point that people will laugh!”

Mittermeier’s first experience of performing in English came during a stint living in the US, where he was equally resolute about getting his message across.

“I always dreamt of mastering performing comedy in English, and this process started in 2003 when I lived in New York for six months. I thought to myself: ‘if not now, then never.’ So I did the whole thing open mic thing and all the clubs. It was then I realised it worked, although I didn’t have a chance to start it out again until five years later when I did the Just for Laughs festivals in Toronto and Montreal.”

Like Eddie Izzard, (a fan of Mittermeier’s, and someone who the German met while gigging in the UK last year), it is all about pushing boundaries, be it in terms of the size of venue or in terms of language – the final frontier. That, and not having to listen to British comics crow about their travels.

“When English comics came over, they would say things like “I did a gig in Cape Town and Singapore” and we were always like “yeah, I had a gig in Osnabruck, and then I flew to Cologne...”

At least now, Mittermeier can add Edinburgh to his list of destinations.