Sheep and lamb, and why they're funny

I'm in England, and kind of astounded by the variety and depth of the comedy here, from the adorably cheeky train conductors who always have a jest as they take your ticket, to the quiz shows and comedy shows and political shows where comedians hold forth. We have some of that in the US, but not nearly as much.

Anyway, I was remembering Robert McKee's observation that English is especially good for comedy, as the history of the language means we have about four words for any thought or object, from the generic (sheep) to the precise (lamb) to the nuanced (mutton, which is the more working class term for sheep meat that's older than lamb, as they couldn't afford lamb). So in English, you could make a play on these terms, or use whichever one is parallel to your actual meaning. For example, there's an insult used in England: "She's mutton dressed as lamb." That is, that woman is pretending to be a girl, or dressing much younger than her actual age. Another "sheep" term that plays on the different terms is "Might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb." That is, if I'm committing a crime and getting caught for it (or committing any offense), I might as well go big rather than little.

That is just one set of terms, and see how many jokes can be created just out of playing with the terminology and the difference between the related words. 
 
Anyway, I'd just heard the "mutton dressed as lamb" insult (not about me ), and thought how conducive to humor is our absurdly repetitive vocabulary. What other funny lines come out of juxtaposing synonyms? I notice this very much relies on a native speaker's ability to make nuanced distinctions between similar words. Can we be (deliberately) funny in a language other than our mother tongue? Nabokov was funny in English (apparently much funnier than he was in his native language!), because he studied words and wordplay and enjoyed puns. But can you think of other non-native comedians? I bet some grew up bi-lingual, so they could really juxtapose meaning and word.
Alicia