The feuding celebutantes will return for a fifth season of their reality series in 2007, E! Entertainment Television, the show's new home since it was canceled after three years on Fox, said today.

The half-hour reality show is now in its fourth season, featuring Hilton and Richie taking turns assuming the role of housewife for various host families.

Because the party princesses have refused to kiss and make up since April 2005, their scenes have largely been shot separately, with little interaction between the pair.

Nevertheless, the series has proven a hit for E!, drawing more than 1.5 million viewers a week to more than triple the network's prime-time average. At least 12 million viewers have tuned in to reruns of the show's first 36 episodes, which E! also is airing, the network said.

The series became a hit after debuting on Fox in December 2003, following the girls as they mixed with common folk as they worked real jobs in America's heartland.

But the show's future fell into doubt after three seasons, when a highly publicised rift developed between the pampered pair, though no explanation for their spat was ever given.

Relations became so strained that the socialites and their entourages were kept separated ¨C and in the dark about the other's whereabouts ¨C for a publicity junket arranged by E! earlier this year.

Chris Alexander, a spokesman for the show's producer 20th Century Fox Television, said "the girls were still not talking" when the current season was shot in March and April, though they agreed to film some segments together.

The first episode opened with a scene in which the two encounter each other in a coffee shop.

Hilton enters with her dog, orders a cup of coffee, buys a cookie and sends it to Richie's table, where a close-up of the cookie reveals the message, written in frosting, "Good luck, bitch." The two then glare at each other.

Alexander said no decisions have been made about what direction the upcoming fifth season will take creatively.

"When we shoot the fifth season, we'll determine what their relationship is at the time," he said.