A line of small flames positioned unfortunately – or strategically, depending on your assessment of likely attitudes towards nosey English journalists – on a ledge at about the same height as the lower hem of my jacket ignited the fabric, and whoosh! Toasted reporter.

Not quite, though the incident did provide an unexpected sideshow for assembled VIPs, gathered for a boxing event, as well as leaving a scorched 12 centimetre hole in said jacket that International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Claudia Bokel duly photographed for posterity.

It was only later that I realised how eerily symbolic my ordeal had been – and that the phrase, “Feuer und Flamme”, fire and flame, has a certain resonance in this green and pleasant north German city at present.

Feuer und Flamme – in the sense of “I’m burning for it” or “I really want it” - is the slogan of a novel, privately-funded publicity campaign that is promoting the merits of an Olympic/Paralympic bid to local people.

The campaign is one of the reasons why there is real hope that the Hamburg referendum, whose result should be announced on November 29 or 30, will bring to an end a baleful streak that has seen St Moritz/Davos, Munich, Kraków, Stockholm, Oslo and Boston turn their back in one way or another on the chance of hosting an Olympic Games.

It is hard to overstate the importance for the Olympic Movement of this democratic exercise in what is an affluent but proudly independent West European port-city of 1.8 million people.

Another thumbs-down would make it hard to see how the Games could possibly be staged in the country of the current IOC President for the foreseeable future.

It would diminish the 2024 field at an unfortunately early point in the race and could well generate increased pressure for the other three European candidate-cities, Budapest, Paris and Rome, to hold their own referenda.

So there is a lot hanging on this.

After just 24 hours in the city, it would be both daft and arrogant of me to attempt to pass judgement on the likely outcome of the Hamburg plebiscite.

I can remind you that a poll conducted in February found that 64 per cent of Hamburg residents over the age of 14 were in favour of hosting the Games.

But will those without especially strong views one way or the other bother to express an opinion, even though efforts are being made to make postal voting as convenient as possible?

It is critical to the city’s Olympic prospects that at least some of them do: a minimum of 20 per cent of the electorate in Hamburg – about 260,000 people - must vote for the exercise to be deemed valid.

Given that the bid team themselves are not allowed to mount a “Vote Yes” campaign ahead of the vote, this is where Feuer und Flamme could really help.

I am told that the key figure behind the initiative is Alexander Otto, son of the founder of Otto Group, a Hamburg-based mail order and e-commerce business; I am also told that the campaign has raised more than €2 million (£1.5 million/$2.2 million) from private-sector contributors.

The debate preceding the referendum should really, um, catch light in the next week or two, after the bid announces the cost of Hamburg’s detailed Olympic and Paralympic project, together, I presume, with a blueprint for who would foot the bill.

Only five new venues are called for, according to a preliminary plan, but these include some biggies – a 60,000-capacity Olympic stadium, the aquatics centre, the athletes’ village – so it is hard to imagine Hamburg being the race’s low-cost option.

(Los Angeles is the other candidate, in addition to the European cities mentioned above.)

Bid chief executive Nikolas Hill is determined, moreover, to come up with a realistic figure from the outset, rather than an ultra-low price-tag that would need to be revised repeatedly upwards in the approach to 2024 should Hamburg win.

The need to negotiate the referendum hurdle – and hence to focus on its own citizens, rather than marketing its candidacy in the outside world - has made it inevitable that the German bid has appeared a slow starter compared to some rivals.

I am told that the planned bid budget is €50 million, but there would appear little point in physically assembling this until after November 29.

If a Yes vote is duly forthcoming, however, the fact that Hamburg secured an unambiguous democratic mandate could be a valuable asset in the campaign.

Bid leaders would be able to assure the Movement, including the IOC members who constitute the electorate, that they would be welcome in Hamburg.

They would be able to argue, furthermore, that by taking this risk, they have performed an invaluable service to Olympic leaders by demonstrating that ordinary people in at least one major western city believe that the benefits of staging the Games do still outweigh the costs.

This is a city I don’t know terribly well, but that I instinctively like. It has an outward-looking, if discreet, demeanour reflecting its history as a hub of international trade; water is everywhere; it has a diversity of architectural styles and cultural/sporting traditions which include British-born performers such as the Beatles and Kevin Keegan.

For all sorts of reasons, I hope that this latest Olympic plebiscite gives a green light to the bid, enabling the adventure to go on.

Even if I did find myself embracing that feuer und flamme slogan a bit too literally.