Should he stay or should he go?

ORLANDO, Fla. – They are the dynamic duo of daytime TV, but Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa aren’t banking on winning a daytime Emmy award this week.

They say they can’t go back to their successful past programs – his “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” her “All My Children.”

And he’s throwing the slightest shadow over the pair’s future on a sunny day at Walt Disney World.

Philbin, 73, acknowledges that he has been haunted by a crack he made about being replaced by “Survivor” host Jeff Probst. Philbin joked that executive producer Michael Gelman couldn’t wait to get Probst in the host’s seat, and the tabloids hopped all over it.

“It was just a harmless, stupid little thing that (I) was trying to kill a few seconds with,” Philbin says.

His contract runs through next year, and he obviously dislikes the recurring retirement question. But does he want to keep doing the show?

“You hate to commit yourself for another two or three years,” he says. “We are in the process of discussing, my agent and Disney. We have until September to make up my mind, I’m told. So (I’m) just sitting around, trying to make up my mind.”

Executive producer Gelman has no doubt what that decision will be.

“The team is in no danger of breaking up,” Gelman says. “He wants to do this. You’re going to see him in 2030.”

Ripa, 34, is adamant that she won’t let Philbin leave.

“Every time he threatens to walk out the door, I say, ‘I have three children to put through college. You’re not going anywhere. I’ll drag you out there on a dolly, like Hannibal Lecter,’ ” she says. “It’s not as much fun without him.”

It’s clear that the partnership has grown in the four years since Ripa joined “Live” as successor to Kathie Lee Gifford. Philbin helped guide Ripa in the new arena, and she responded with disarming breeziness.

“He’s probably my best friend,” Ripa says. “I know he’ll never let me fall on my face. He never annoys me because we spend only an hour a day together. We’re constantly on our honeymoon phase.”

Philbin concurs. He says the secret of their success is that they never talk before the show. They don’t talk that much after the show, either, because Ripa is running off to make her ABC sitcom, “Hope & Faith.”

“We can compound everything we are going to talk about in that first 22 minutes of our show,” Philbin says. “I find it comes off more spontaneous, more real than if we talked about it before. That, I think, is the essence of why the whole thing works.”

“Live With Regis and Kelly” is averaging 4.4 million viewers this season, slightly down from a year ago. The show keeps jazzing up its formula, such as doing a week on a cruise ship in June.

But despite a 17-year run in national syndication, the program has never won the talk-show Emmy, a slight that stings.

Ripa quickly dismisses the notion that she and Philbin could take the best-host Emmy at the 32nd annual daytime ceremony Friday (he won as a solo host in the time between Gifford and Ripa). Ripa predicts that either Ellen DeGeneres or Dr. Phil McGraw will collect the trophy.

“It’s very difficult to win when there are multiple hosts, like the girls from ‘The View,’ ” Ripa says. “Kathie Lee and Regis never won, and they were terrific together.”

Ripa became a daytime favorite first on ABC’s “All My Children,” where she played Hayley Vaughan for 12 years. On the soap, she met actor Mark Consuelos, who later became her husband.

She left the show in 2002, and she’s astonished that she hasn’t been asked back.

“My husband’s been invited back,” Ripa says. “Every other actor I know has been invited back, even people who have been killed off the show. My character is still alive.”

Philbin misses the prime-time version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” but says its return is unlikely.

“ABC is flying high,” he says. “Have you heard of ‘Lost’? Have you seen ‘Desperate Housewives’? They don’t need anything else.

“Maybe it dredges up bad memories for them,” he adds, a reference to the network’s burning out the game show through overuse.

Philbin faces no such problem. The public hasn’t tired of him, although he has logged more than 15,000 hours on camera, setting a Guinness World Record.

Ripa hopes he keeps adding to that count.

“I never appreciate Regis until he’s not there – the show feels like a weight,” she says.

“There are people (for whom) that one hour seems like five years. I’ve hosted with them. There are people uncomfortable doing it. For me and Regis, that one hour seems like three minutes.”