only the freshest..
I thought Fanny was the author of children’s stories. Fanny Hill?
Or I thought fanny = posterior, bum, arse, rear end, tail, etc etc
The blind Fanny J. Crosby holds the world record for most prolific hymnist (according to a children’s edition of the Guinness Book). She had written thousands, by the time of her death. In her case, Fanny was a nickname for Frances.
Isn’t “fanny” slang for the, er, opposite side of a female’s body from the bum? That’s what I heard, anyhow.
Spot on John (can you see why the sniggering ensues?)
Also, a homeless person with a scabby dog on the end of a piece of string, often selling ‘the big issue’ (transatlantic cousins- don’t even ask!) I have heard reffered to in the West Country as a ‘Pickey’. Pronounced Piekey.
I don’t think this is very polite though, probably not very P.C. I prefer ‘person of no fixed abode’, which is what I will be if I don’t get off this site and finish my prep for the meeting I have tommorow! 
‘Bum’ is nowadays an acceptable term for one’s backside, but I remember years ago my father having a fit if my sister and I refferred to it as that, and had we had to say ‘bottom’. My father also insisted that we refferred to the Pub as ‘the pint shop’ , but I think that this was more to protect himself from those essays you used to have to write at school about ‘what we did at the weekend’. I think it made it look a lot better to say we spent the weekend at the ‘pint shop’ rather than the pub!!! He tried so damn hard to be middle class, ha ha, bless him. 
In my childhood (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) that sort of academic torment consisted of a required essay at the beginning of the school year on “What I did during summer vacation.” I dreaded the beginning of school (otherwise, I loved school…what a geek) because of this feared assignment; my family never did anything during the summer even remotely interesting. I quickly realized the solution was simple, and started to make stuff up. That became fun. If I were any shakes at all as a writer (which I’m emphatically not), I’d pinpoint the origins there; as it stands, it’s just the beginning of an unattractive tendency to confabulate. 
The children where you live must be pretty “advanced” (if that’s the right word). 
http://eserver.org/fiction/fanny-hill/01.html
Then there was Fanny Brice, who was the subject of Funny Girl. I used to hear her playing “Baby Snooks” on the radio. http://search.eb.com/women/articles/Brice_Fanny.html
…and then there was Fanny Adams:
http://www.hants.gov.uk/museum/curtis/fannyadams/
…which dreadful story is strangly intertwined with the expression “sweet F.A.”, which one of our UK brethren may feel free to explain, for I shan’t.
O.K., I’ll go for it. Sweet Fanny Adams in U.K. parlance means sweet F*** A"". i.e. nothing. Where the **** is toasty when you need him/her?
Yes, several copies of “The Big Issue” were waved at me last time I was on your side of the water.
Over here though, the fanny is the spankable side.
And the Baltimore area (aka “Balmer, Merlin”) has a dialect all its own, with trademark phrases such as: Q. Where ya’ goin’ this weekend?
A. Downey Aishun. (down to the ocean.)
I can’t find “dast” in the Americah Heritage. Is it just a dialectical pronunciation of “darest”?